SALON

Thursday, Jan 5, 2012 11:54 AM UTC

British Red Cross Worker Kidnapped In Pakistan

By and

Topics: From the Wires,

British Red Cross Worker Kidnapped In PakistanVisitors are standing outside the Red Cross office in Quetta, Pakistan on Thursday, Jan 5, 2012. Armed men seized a Red Cross worker from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Thursday, police and the organization said. Local police officer Nazir Ahmed Kurd said his initial information was that the man was a British health worker. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)(Credit: AP)

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Armed men seized a British Red Cross worker from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Thursday, police said.

Officer Nazir Ahmed Kurd said the man was seized from a vehicle that was heading to a Red Cross office in an upscale housing complex in Quetta. The assailants bundled him into their car and drove off. He had been visiting a local school.

International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Sitara Jabeen declined to disclose the man’s name or nationality, but confirmed one of the group’s workers had been seized.

Quetta is home to Islamist militants as well as separatist insurgents. Both have kidnapped foreigners and locals in the region before.

Another officer, Ahsan Mahboob, said the man was was traveling with a Pakistani doctor and a driver. They were not seized, he said.

In 2009, an American working for the United Nations refugee agency in the city was kidnapped and held for two months.

___

Ahmed reported from Quetta.

More Abdul Sattar.

More Munir Ahmed.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations