KABUL, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents kidnapped seven members of an Afghan demining team in an ambush in the volatile east of the country on Wednesday and took them into neighbouring Pakistan to evade security forces, a local official said.
Haji Hazrat Khaksar, the chief of Momand Dara district in volatile Nangarhar province, said a group of 16 deminers were on their way to his district when they were attacked by Taliban fighters.
Nine of the group escaped while the insurgents fought security forces pursuing the group before crossing into Pakistan, he said.
"We couldn't pursue and shoot because they fled and crossed the border with the deminers," Khaksar told Reuters by telephone from Nangarhar.
The demining team worked for the Organistaion for Mine Clearance and Afghan Rehabilitation (OMAR), a non-government Afghan body that has been clearing mines and other unexploded ordinance in different parts of the country since 1990.
OMAR employs about 645 people, according to its website (www.landmineclearance.org/).
Khaksar said the Taliban drove two vans towards the border before setting the vehicles on fire and escaping.
The rugged, mountainous border between Nangarhar and Pakistan's northwest is hard to police and insurgents have long drifted between the two areas to carry out attacks and slip away.
Afghanistan's growing insurgency is at its strongest in the south and east, the traditional heartland of the Taliban and other insurgents, but has spread into once calmer areas in the north and west over the past year.
Violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001, with civilian and military casualties at record levels despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops and about 260,000 Afghan police and soldiers. (Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Paul Tait and Ron Popeski) (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
