ISLAMABAD: The Taliban are expected to release two Pakistani media workers who were arrested last night while reporting for Khyber News from Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, the bureau chief of the detained journalists said on Thursday.

The Afghan Taliban had promised to uphold media freedom in Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul on August 15, asking journalists to report with "impartiality" to improve governance in the country.

A commander of the insurgent faction even granted an interview to a female news anchor of a leading television channel as a goodwill gesture.

While the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid could not be reached for a comment about the detention of the Pakistani journalists, another Afghan commander Abu Khalid confirmed in a Twitter post that the group had “nabbed" them "in Kandahar last evening.”

“I spoke to our reporter Abdul Mateen Achakzai on the phone last evening and discovered that he and his cameraman were doing well,” Jabbar Shah, the Balochistan bureau chief for Khyber TV, told Arab News. “He was being questioned but treated well by the Taliban. I hope he will be back later today.”

Pakistan’s information minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said he was unaware of the development, though he added that his government would look into it and take necessary measures to ensure the protection of the two journalists.

“We have yet to confirm whether they [journalists] were detained, how they left for Afghanistan and why they were arrested but we will take measures for their safe recovery,” he told Arab News.

Secretary General of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists Nasir Zaidi said his country’s media community had serious concerns about the Taliban decision to detain professional journalists.

“We demand the government of Pakistan to take up the issue at the highest level with the Taliban and ensure the release of our colleagues,” he said. “We also ask the Taliban to allow journalists to discharge their professional duties.”