Pakistani policemen kidnapped; 36 militants killed

KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) - Militants in Pakistan have kidnapped 26 police recruits on their way to college, police said on Thursday, while security forces killed 36 Islamist insurgents in clashes elsewhere in the northwest.

Separately, the British High Commission closed its visa application centre in the capital, Islamabad, because of a threat, a mission spokeswoman said.

The police recruits were travelling on three buses to a training college in the town of Hangu in North West Frontier Province when gunmen abducted them on Wednesday in the Orakzai tribal region. The militants freed the drivers.

"The drivers told us that militants had kidnapped the recruits," said Hangu police officer Mohammad Idrees.

Militants battling security forces have kidnapped numerous government officials, soldiers and policemen over the past year and are still holding many of them.

Pakistani Taliban also say they are holding two Chinese telecommunications engineers abducted last week along with a Pakistani driver and guard.

Pakistan has been a U.S. ally in its fight against Islamist militancy since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but the United States has repeatedly asked it to do more, in particular to stop Taliban infiltrating into Afghanistan from border sanctuaries.

Security forces have killed more than 500 insurgents, the government says, in a surge of violence since militants suspended talks with a new civilian government in June.

The violence has worried investors, already gloomy about a sagging economy and incessant squabbling between political parties, as well as allies hoping to see the government turn its attention to the nuclear-armed country's other problems.

THREAT

Most of the fighting has been in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border and in the Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province.

A military spokesman in Swat, which until last year was a tourist destination, said 16 militants were killed on Thursday when troops shelled their hideouts. The military said 30 militants were killed in the same region on Wednesday.

Twenty militants were killed in an exchange of fire overnight in the Darra Adam Kheil region to the south Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, a paramilitary force said.

Pakistan says it is doing all it can to combat militants but U.S. patience is apparently wearing thin.

On Wednesday, U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan killed 20 Pakistanis in a tribal region close to the Afghan border in what was the first known incursion into Pakistan by U.S.-led troops since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

In Islamabad, the British High Commission said its visa application centre, which is in a separate premises to the High Commission, had been closed for security reasons.

"We've received a threat and in response to that we've decided to close the application centre. We'll reopen the centre once we've fully accessed the threat," said High Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Wilkes.

A suicide car-bomber attacked the Danish embassy in Islamabad in June, killing six people.

(Additional reporting by Shams Mohmand)