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Chinese hostages escape Taliban captivity in Pakistan

Friday, October 17, 2008 Leave a Comment

Pakistan army has said that security forces have found a Chinese engineer who had been kidnapped along with a colleague by local Taliban in August.

An army statement said only that one of the men was found Friday and that it would provide more details later.

Earlier two Chinese engineers kidnapped by local Taliban escaped from captivity on Friday but one of them was recaptured by the insurgents, a Taliban spokesman said.

The abductees managed to slip away when they were being transported in a vehicle from the Piochar area in the restive Swat district to the neighbouring Dir region in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

They were chased by the Taliban in the wooded mountains and one of them was caught after he received injuries due to a fall, the militants said.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan confirmed the incident, saying he 'hoped' that the other escaped Chinese would be caught soon. 'The entire region is in our control. Where can he go?' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the telephone from an undisclosed location.

The wounded engineer was given medical treatment at a small health unit run by the Taliban and moved to some 'safer place,' he added.

The engineers were abducted on August 29 together with their local driver and a security guard in Dir after repairing a communications tower of the China Mobile Pakistan company.

The two telecommunications engineers disappeared in the Dir region of western Pakistan on Aug. 29. A spokesman for Taliban militants in the neighboring Swat region claimed that they were holding the pair.

Pakistani officials say the victims had disregarded advice not to travel to the area without heavy security.

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