Militants kidnap six Pakistanis working for Polish oil firm

(REUTERS) Six Pakistanis working for a Polish oil and gas surveying company have been kidnapped in northwestern Pakistan, military sources told Reuters, years after a Polish engineer from the same company was beheaded by Pakistani militants.

The six Geofizyka Krakow workers were snatched from their vehicles on Saturday afternoon on a road near the village of Drazinda, about 80km (50 miles) from the city of Dera Ismail Khan, two officials with security forces in the area said.

One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to media, provided Reuters with the names and national identity card numbers of the workers.

Geofizyka Krakow, a subsidiary of Poland's state-run gas firm PGNiG, could not be immediately reached for comment. On its website, the PGNiG local unit said it had gone into liquidation in August 2016.

"They were sub-contractors providing works for Geofizyka Krakow, a company which is now in liquidation. They were not Polish," a PGNiG spokesman said. He declined to give any more details.

A Polish foreign ministry spokeswoman tweeted that there were no Polish citizens in the group and that the Polish embassy in Islamabad is monitoring the situation.

No militant group has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings. In the past, militants from the hardline Islamist Pakistani Taliban group have kidnapped people in the region for ransom or to bargain for the release of prisoners.

The area where the workers were kidnapped is close to South Waziristan, part of the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan.

Geofizyka Krakow has a long history of seismic survey work in Pakistan.

In 2008, a Polish engineer working for the firm was kidnapped by the Pakistani Taliban near the northwestern city of Attock, and beheaded several months later.