In the second incident, Pakistani officials said seven civil engineers were aboard a helicopter on a routine maintenance mission when it crash-landed in a Taliban-controlled area of Logar province, near the border with Pakistan, and that all had been taken hostage by Taliban fighters.
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“All crew members are safe”, Zakilwal said on Friday.
Spokesman for the Governor of Logar, Sameem Saleh said that those passengers and crew members who were detained by the Taliban group are all Pakistanis.
Taliban militants attacked a group of 12 American and European tourists escorted by an Afghan army convoy in western Herat province on August 4, leaving at least seven people wounded as the insurgents step up nationwide attacks.
The tourists were on their way to Herat from Bamiyan and Ghor provinces when they were ambushed by Taliban gunmen, another spokesman said. Pakistani officials have confirmed that six hostages have been taken. “We conveyed to them that they are in safe hands”.
He added that seeking help from the Afghan government or USA military was of no use because the Taliban are in full control of the district. This confirmation came on Friday as the Taliban also assured that all the crew members are alive and doing well.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif visited the families of the helicopter’s pilots Colonel (retd) Shafiqur Rehman, Colonel (retd.) Nasir Mehmood and Colonel (retd) Safdar Hussein in Lahore today expressed his heartfelt sympathies.
Pakistani officials said the helicopter belonged to Punjab province and permission to use the Afghan airspace had been sought.
Military spokesman Lt General Asim Bajwa said in a statement that On Thursday, Chief of Pakistan Army General Raheel Sharif spoke with the top U.S. commander General John Nicholson asking for the worldwide military help in recovering the Pakistani personnel.
“The government has launched an investigation and security forces have been ordered to carry out a rescue operation”, the Afghan defence ministry’s spokesman said in Kabul.
A Foreign Office spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We are urgently seeking information about an incident in Western Afghanistan and are in close contact with the local authorities’.
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Meanwhile, the government has chose to send a delegation to Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack. “The first option is to recover the hostages through dialogue”, he said.
