Pakistani envoy to Afghanistan missing

Kabul: Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, has been reported missing, senior Afghan officials confirmed on Monday amid speculation that he had been kidnapped. 

The report followed military officials’ announcement that Pakistani security forces had captured a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, following a gun-battle along the border.

The ambassador was travelling on the highway between Peshawar and Kabul, the Afghan officials said.

The BBC quoted unidentified sources as saying that the ambassador had been kidnapped in a semi-autonomous tribal area where Muslim extremists are known to be active.

Military officials earlier had said Mansour Dadullah, younger brother of Mullah Dadullah, a widely-feared Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, was wounded in the gun-battle, which erupted after he and five other Taliban members crossed into Qilla Saifullah town in the southern province of Balochistan Monday.

“Mansour Dadullah and his five accomplices were captured after a gunfight in which they were also wounded,” an official at the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Public Relations directorate sai