Taliban kidnap 500 students, teachers in FR Bannu

[Naveed Yaseen]

MIRANSHAH/PESHAWAR: Taliban gunmen were accused Monday of brazen abduction of a convoy of 30 buses carrying more than 500 students and staff of Razmak Cadet College (of North Waziristan) in Frontier Region (FR) Bannu.

They were on their way to Bannu after the college closed for its summer vacation, town police chief Iqbal Marwat said.

“Only two buses carrying some 25 students reached Bannu,” Marwat said, adding that about 28 buses carrying around 400 students were missing.

“They have been kidnapped by Taliban militants,” Marwat told AFP.

The college is an army-run educational institution for civilians. Those kidnapped include students and civilian staff, he said.

Officials told Daily Times the convoy reached Kajori checkpost on the border of North Waziristan and FR Bannu safe, but were abducted from Marwat Kanal area in Baqakhel police precincts.

“Militants started firing in the air to stop the vehicles and then they forcibly drove them to unknown place,” Javed Alam, vice principal of the college, told a private television channel. APP quoted Alam as saying that only 15 students and five teachers had been abducted.

“We were in a convoy of around 30 vehicles, escorted by tribal police, when masked men stopped our vehicles and started asking questions,” said Mohammad Shafiq, a ninth grade student among those who fled.

“They asked us whether we are army recruits, first they were questioning us in Urdu and then in Pashto,” he said. “They stopped us for some time but allowed most of those students who were from the tribal areas to go,” Shah Hussain, another student in the same class said. haji mujtaba/agencies

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg1_4