Gunmen abducted an Iranian diplomat in Peshawar today, a day after a US aid worker was shot dead in the city on the front line of an Islamist insurgency sweeping northwest Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan.
The Iranian consulate in Peshawar confirmed that commercial attache Heshmatollah Atharzadeh had been kidnapped. A policeman assigned to guard him was shot and killed trying to resist the assailants, police said.
He was on his way to the consulate from his home when his car was ambushed in Hayatabad, a neighborhood bordering the Khyber tribal region.
The identity of the kidnappers is not known, but suspicion will fall on the Taliban and affiliated Sunni Muslim groups such as al-Qaeda. Criminal gangs using religion as a cover are also active in the area.
Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan, Mashollah Shakeri, as saying that under diplomatic conventions, "Islamabad is responsible for the safety of Iranian diplomats."
US aid worker Steve Vance and his driver were killed outside the home where Vance lived with his wife and five children in Peshawar yesterday.
In late August, three members of the US consulate in Peshawar escaped unhurt after gunmen ambushed their vehicle.
Peshawar is the last city on the road to the Khyber Pass, the main land route to Afghanistan. Militants seized 13 trucks laden with supplies for Western forces on the road on Monday.
US State Department spokesman Robert Wood said in Washington last night that the consulate in Peshawar had put out a notification urging employees and other Americans in the area to stay at home or in their offices until further notice.
Afghanistan's ambassador-designate was kidnapped in Hayatabad in September, and there has been a rash of other kidnappings in recent weeks, including a Polish engineer snatched in the nearby city of Attock last month.
Reuters