John Solecki, the head of the UN refugee agency’s office in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, was found on Saturday night by the side of a road near Quetta, the provincial capital, with his hands and feet bound, pleading: “Help me, help me!”
Ethnic Baluch separatists had earlier claimed responsibility for the abduction and at one point threatened to kill Mr Solecki — the highest-profile Westerner to be kidnapped in Pakistan since Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002. News of Mr Solecki’s release came …

A government official in the Philippines says kidnappers holding three Red Cross workers have threatened to behead one of their captives Tuesday by 2 p.m. local time (0600 UTC) unless police and troops withdraw from Jolo island.
Authorities say the militant group Abu Sayyaf contacted the government late Sunday to demand a complete evacuation of government forces from Jolo, in the southern Philippines, by Monday night. The island nation’s interior secretary, Ronaldo Puno, says it is physically impossible to comply with the new demand.

British officials believe all five Britons kidnapped in Iraq almost two years ago are alive, despite claims by the hostage takers last year that one of them had taken his own life.
The revelation comes after the British embassy in Baghdad received a tape of one of the hostages, the first such video in eight months. The tape was handed over to the Embassy by Iraqi security officials last week, and was purportedly filmed nine days ago. Embassy officials declined to reveal the identity of the hostage, while analysts try to …

MANILA, Philippines—The Filipino engineer held captive by Abu Sayyaf bandits in the mountains of Indanan, Sulu, along with her two colleagues in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has pleaded for help to end their suffering.
Mary Jean Lacaba was allowed by her captors to speak on the phone with this reporter on the afternoon of Feb. 25. Her voice was low and trembling, and she spoke in short sentences, in a mix of Filipino and English.
Lacaba relayed the same message over and over again, directed at the government …

Zamboanga City/Manila: Nine armed men abducted a 36-year old Sri Lankan peace worker in war-torn southern Basilan Island in a pre-dawn attack on Friday, officials said.
Omar Jalil was roused from his sleep by nine gunmen, who forcibly entered his home in Maloong village in Lamitan City at 2:25am, said Basilan police director Senior Superintendent Salik Macapantar.
Jalil is with Nonviolent Peaceforce, a nonpartisan group that has been sending observers to the four-decade-old separatist struggle in the southern Philippines.

INDANAN, Sulu: The Abu Sayyaf is not demanding a ransom for the release of three volunteers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) whom the group abducted on January 15.
Abu Ali, a senior leader within the Abu Sayyaf, told The Manila Times that what they want is an independent Bangsamoro homeland.

The Majlis’ National Security and Foreign Policy Commission criticizes Pakistan for failing to protect a kidnapped Iranian diplomat.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the head of the Iranian parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, criticized the Pakistani government for failing to protect the kidnapped Iranian diplomat.
“Pakistan has lost its security,” he stated.

Pakistani police forces have arrested five suspects in connection with the abduction of an Iranian attache in the northern tribal region.
“According to their latest report, North-West Frontier police detained five individuals during an operation they carried out to find the hideout of the abductors,” Iran’s Consulate in Peshawar told IRIB in Islamabad on Saturday.
“Pakistani police have launched a second operation to locate the hideout this morning,” he added.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, bringing the total number of attacks in waters off the impoverished African nation this year to 83, a maritime official said Tuesday.
The tanker was heading to Asia when it was seized Monday in the Gulf of Aden by pirates armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

Heavily armed Somali gunmen stormed across the Kenyan border on Monday and kidnapped two Italian nuns from a remote town in northeastern Kenya, witnesses and local authorities said.
The attackers struck before dawn and then raced back across the border into lawless S