Hundreds of students feared kidnapped by Taliban

Hundreds of Pakistani students travelling from a tribal area near the Afghan border to the north-western town of Bannu have gone missing along with teachers and relatives. A Pakistani official says they have been abducted by Taliban militants.Hundreds of Pakistani students coming from a restive tribal area near the Afghan border went missing late Monday, police said, while a government official said he feared they had been abducted by Taliban.The students from a cadet college in the tribal North Waziristan region were going to the northwestern town of Bannu in more than 30 buses after a summer vacation, Bannu town police chief Iqbal Marwat told AFP.Only two buses have arrived in the town, Marwat said."Two vehicles carrying some 25 students reached Bannu, we are investigating about other students," Marwat said.Mirza Mohammad Jihadi, an adviser on tribal affairs to Pakistan's prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told local television "according to my reports they were kidnapped by Taliban militants."However, Marwat and another senior official in the North West Frontier Province, Habibullah Khan, told AFP: "We have reports about missing students, but I can not say at this stage that they have been kidnapped."