Kidnapped Pak journalist photographed Rabia missile

Five masked men armed with AK-47 assault rifles abducted Hayatullah Khan in the town of Mir Ali, about 18 miles north of Miranshah, administrative capital of the North Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan, witnesses said.

The al-Qaeda operative, whom Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf identified as Abu Hamza Rabia, was killed on December 1 when an explosion destroyed a house in Haisori village, east of Miranshah. Rabia was believed to be al-Qaeda’s international operations commander.

Musharraf said the blast occurred when Rabia was making bombs from explosives stored in the house. Pakistani authorities insisted the compound had not been attacked.

But residents of Asoray claimed that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from a US unmanned aerial vehicle.

They said that metal pieces of the missile, photos of which Khan filed to the European Pressphoto Agency, were inscribed with the English words “guided missile”.

In Khan’s pictures, the fragments are also marked “AGM-114”, the US military’s designator for the laser-guided Hellfire missile, which is carried on the remote-controlled Predator aircraft. The initials “US” also appeared on the shrapnel in photos filed by Khan, who also works for Pakistan’s Urdu-language daily newspaper Ausaf and the English-language daily The Nation.

US counterterrorism operations in Pakistan are a sensitive political issue for Musharraf, who is under pressure from Islamic groups and nationalists who feel he has gone too far in supporting the US.

The Pakistani military’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency is frequently accused of harassing journalists and detaining Pakistanis without charge. But senior government officials in Peshawar denied that intelligence agencies were involved.

“We understand the situation in the tribal territory is not very favorable for journalists, but it doesn’t mean that any secret agency is involved in his abduction,” said Shah Zaman Khan, spokesman for the governor of North West Frontier Province.

One of the journalist’s friends said Hayatullah Khan had been arrested by US and allied Afghan National Army a year and a half ago near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and interrogated for two months. The man, who spoke on condition he not be named, said he negotiated a deal with Afghan authorities for Khan’s release. —LAT-WP

12 killed in Waziristan bomb blast

WANA: At least 12 people were killed and dozens wounded when a bomb exploded on Thursday in a market in Pakistan’s troubled tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said. The blast hit a hotel and shops in a market in Jandola town in the South Waziristan region.

Also on Thursday, the beheaded bodies of two members of a paramilitary force were found near, Wana, said a member of the force, the South Waziristan Scouts.

The two men went missing on Tuesday when they and two colleagues went into Wana town in civilian clothes. The whereabouts of the other two men were not known, said the member of the force. REUTERS