Gunmen abduct 13 laborers, release 9 in northwestern Pakistani district of Tank

PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen abducted 13 laborers on Friday in the northwestern Pakistani district of Tank but released nine, police said on Saturday, amid a surge in militancy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the rest of the country.
Attacks against security targets and the assassination of police and government officials have been on the rise in recent months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with most assaults claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
In the latest incident, 13 laborers, all from the central Pakistani province of Punjab, were kidnapped in Tank district. No group has as yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. 
“The laborers were hired from a private company and were repairing the poles of a 132KV transmission line in Tatoor village located in Shaheed Mureed Akbar Police Station,” District Police Officer Abdus Salam Khalid told Arab News. 
The officer said the gunmen drove off with the 13 laborers but then dropped off nine on a roadside while the whereabouts of four were unknown. He did not specify why the nine workers were released. 
“No call for ransom has been received yet and the search operation is underway to locate the persons.”
In April this year, a session judge of the South Wazirstan court, Shakir Ullah Marwat, was abducted by unidentified gunmen from the Dl Khan-Tank road. He was recovered days later with the intervention of local jirga and said he had been abducted by the TTP.
In the past, ethnically-motivated attacks against Punjabis have mostly taken place in the southwestern Balochistan province. 
Last month, unidentified gunmen stormed into a house near Gwadar city in Balochistan and killed seven workers in an apparent ethnic attack. All the laberers were from Punjab. A month earlier, the Balochistan Liberation Army sepratist group had claimed responsibility for killing several Punjabi workers who were abducted from a bus on a highway in Balochistan.