American U.N. official is kidnapped in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen kidnapped an American who is a senior U.N. refugee official in Pakistan and killed his driver in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday morning, U.N. officials said. In response, Pakistani security officials locked down routes leading out of the city.

The American official, John Solecki, the head of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Quetta, was abducted about 8 a.m. as he and his driver, Syed Hashim, an 18-year employee of the agency, were on their way to the United Nations' local offices in Quetta. Hashim was shot and later died at a local hospital.

High-profile kidnappings and other attacks have become more routine in Pakistan, particularly in Peshawar, the hub of the northwestern Pakistani frontier, which has experienced a spate of attacks on diplomats and Westerners in recent months.

But such abductions have not been common in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, which the Pakistani government called a "dastardly terrorist act."

A Pakistani security official in Quetta said he believed the abduction had probably been carried out either by the Taliban, which have a presence in the city, or by a group seeking a ransom. The official described the abduction as the first kidnapping of a Westerner in the city in recent memory, and he said it appeared to be modeled on the recent abductions in Peshawar.

Baluchistan, not far from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, has seen a low-level insurgency spearheaded by nationalists who are demanding more autonomy and a greater share of the province's natural resources. At the same time, the Taliban have also maintained a presence in several districts of the province, especially in the areas near the border with Afghanistan.

U.N. officials expressed shock and dismay at the death of Hashim and the abduction of Solecki, who they said had been in Pakistan for about two years.

"We strongly condemn this attack on humanitarian workers in Pakistan who have been doing their utmost to deliver their humanitarian mission," the organization said, adding that "all possible measures" were being taken to secure his release.

The U.N. agency has 49 staff members in Quetta, where it has worked since 1980. It provides support to some 400,000 Afghan refugees in 10 villages and camps, agency officials said.