Journalists hurt in abduction try in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Japanese journalist and an Afghan colleague were shot and wounded in an attempted kidnapping in the northern city of Peshawar yesterday after conducting interviews with Taliban fighters in the nearby tribal region, the police and local journalists said.

The attack occurred amid a surge of militant violence in Peshawar, including the assassination of an American aid worker Wednesday and the kidnapping of an Iranian diplomat on Thursday.

The bureau chief of the Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, Modoki Yotsukura, and Sami Yousafzai, a correspondent for Newsweek, were in a car in the Hayatabad section of Peshawar, when a gunman opened fire on them, according to accounts by the police and local journalists.

They were returning from Khyber, an area of the tribal region that abuts Peshawar, and where Taliban militants have a strong presence, when the shooting occurred, according to the accounts.

"They went to Khyber to interview Taliban commanders," said Mushtaq Yusufzai, a journalist in Peshawar.

"There was a car with gunmen who wanted to kidnap them. The driver didn't stop and they opened fire on them, and they escaped."

The bureau chief for Newsweek in Pakistan, Ron Moreau, said Yousafzai had been shot in the chest, hand, and arm, and had been admitted to the hospital in Peshawar.

Yotsukura was shot in the right leg and was being taken to Islamabad for further treatment, the Japanese Embassy said.

The assassination on Wednesday of Stephen D. Vance, an experienced development specialist who was involved in a project to bring jobs to the tribal area financed by the US Agency for International Development, shook the community of foreign aid workers, diplomats, and journalists in Pakistan.

The Hayatabad neighborhood where the two journalists were shot yesterday has become a notoriously dangerous area of the city where kidnappings for ransom have become very frequent.

NEW YORK TIMES