Gunmen kidnap Afghan government adviser in Pakistan

CHITRAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen in Pakistan have kidnapped an Afghan government adviser visiting relatives in a northwestern border region, police said Monday, the third prominent Afghan kidnapped in Pakistan in recent weeks.

Akhtar Kohistani, an adviser at the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, was abducted in Seerdoor Kadak, a village in Pakistan's northwestern Chitral district, while visiting his in-laws.

"Unidentified armed men broke into his in-laws' house last night and took him away," said Chitral police chief Sher Akbar Khan.

Chitral is opposite the insurgency-plagued Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.

Khan said the motive for the abduction was not known and his men were investigating.

Late last week, gunmen kidnapped Zia-ul-Haq, a brother of Afghan Finance Minister Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady, in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, security officials said.

Pakistani police are also searching for Afghanistan's top diplomat in Pakistan, ambassador-designate Abdul Khaliq Farahi, who was kidnapped on September 22 in Peshawar.

Islamist militants are fighting the governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which are both important U.S. allies.

Kidnapping by criminal gangs is also a problem in both countries.

(Reporting by Gul Hammad Farooqi and Alamgir Bitani; Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)