Abducted American UN worker freed

[David]

AP


ISLAMABAD – An American U.N. worker kidnapped near the Afghan border more than two months ago was abandoned by his captors Saturday, a police official said, but the militant violence plaguing Pakistan continued its relentless pace, as a suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary base in the capital, killing eight.

John Solecki was taken captive Feb. 2 in the southwestern city of Quetta in Baluchistan by kidnappers who indicated they were separatists and threatened repeatedly to behead him.

Wazir Khan Nasir, a senior police official in Quetta, said Solecki was abandoned by his captors in a southern village on Saturday and was now in police custody.

The U.N. could not immediately confirm his release.

Solecki's kidnappers have identified themselves as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, suggesting a link to local separatists who have waged a long insurgency against Pakistan's government rather than to the Taliban or al-Qaida.

Militant violence continued elsewhere Saturday, when suicide bomber blew himself up inside a base housing paramilitary troops in the heart of the Pakistani capital, killing eight troops and wounding several more.

The attack was the latest example of the dangerous spread of extremist violence from the area near the Afghan border, where a U.S. missile strike killed 13 people Saturday and two people were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a security checkpoint.

The bomber who struck troops in Islamabad sneaked into the base after dark from a wooded area at the rear and detonated his explosives inside one of several large tents used as sleeping quarters, senior police official Bin Yamin said.

Another four members of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary, many of whose members are assigned to guard foreign embassies and VIPs in the city, were wounded, Yamin said.

The blast was the second in Islamabad in two weeks and follows a militant assault on a police academy in another major city that fueled fears for the stability of the nuclear-armed country.

There was no claim of responsibility for Saturday's attack on the police base. However, the leader of a Taliban faction accused of ties to al-Qaida warned Wednesday that militants would strike soon in Islamabad.

Washington has pushed Pakistan to crack down on militants operating in its territory who have been launching cross-border attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

A suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles Saturday at an alleged militant hide-out in North Waziristan, leaving 13 people dead, intelligence officials said. The dead and injured in Data Khel village included local and foreign militants, but women and children were also killed, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The U.S. is suspected of carrying out more than three dozen drone strikes over the past year in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Pakistan says the drone strikes violate the country's sovereignty, kill innocent civilians and generate sympathy for the militants. But the U.S. believes the attacks are an effective tool to combat militants in the region.

Also in North Waziristan, a suicide car bomber attacked a security checkpoint in Miran Shah on Saturday killing at least two people and wounding more than 20 others, officials said.

The attacker rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint at the entrance of the army headquarters in North Waziristan and detonated his explosives, said Mohammad Azhar, a local government official.

Abbas Ali, a doctor at a government hospital in Miran Shah, said at least two civilians were killed in the attack and 27 others were wounded, including seven children.

The attack also wounded three soldiers, according to a military official who said troops disrupted the attack by opening fire on the vehicle, causing it to explode before it reached the checkpoint. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The discrepancy between the two accounts could not immediately be explained.