USAID official, driver kidnapped in Pakistan

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped an official of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) along with his driver and Land Cruiser jeep from Usherai in Upper Dir district on Monday.

The gunmen could not kidnap the other four officials of the agency, who were also travelling along the kidnapped official, as the kidnappers came under firing from the locals after the kidnapping attempt.

The USAID has launched a project in Dir to distribute wheat and edible oil among the primary school students as an incentive to promote education in the district.

A USAID team, comprising up to ten persons, took the foodstuff to Usherai Dara, located some 40 kilometres east of the district headquarters, Dir, to distribute it among the students.

The locals and police sources told The News that the USAID officials were on their way back along with their empty mini-trucks when hooded armed persons forced them to stop in the Almas area and picked up an official identified as Waqar and his driver.

“We were returning when four hooded men, three of them brandishing Kalashnikovs and one holding a pistol, forced us to stop. They asked us to switch off our cellphones and started searching us. Meanwhile, the locals opened fire on them which created panic and they took away Waqar and a Land Cruiser jeep along with the driver,” an official of the Gandigar police station quoted one of the USAID officials as telling him.

The police official told that four USAID officials, who could not be kidnapped, had been shifted to the concerned police station while two of them were with their relatives in Usherai.

The official, who requested anonymity, said that police rushed to the spot and erected blockades across the district to check the movement of the kidnappers.

“We are still looking into the possibility whether the missing USAID official is hiding somewhere in the area after the kidnapping attempt as the kidnappers ran in a hurry and left his other colleagues untouched,” the official said.

The kidnapped person is the nephew of the Awami National Party Upper Dir chapter’s president, Syed Anwar. No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping so far.