ISLAMABAD, Aug 31: Two Chinese engineers have gone missing in northwest Pakistan along with their driver and a security guard, a Chinese embassy official and police said on Sunday.

The group disappeared on Friday in the North West Frontier Province near the border with Afghanistan, a senior diplomat at the embassy told AFP.

Police have sent three investigation teams to the rugged area in an attempt to trace the engineers and their entourage.

“We don’t know whether someone has kidnapped them, they have lost their way or met an accident, because it is a mountainous area,” senior police official Khurshid Khan said.

The engineers, working for Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment, were checking an installation in the area when they went missing.

Militants have been known to target Chinese workers. China is one of Pakistan’s closest allies and its largest arms supplier.

In October 2004, militants led by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Abdullah Mehsud, kidnapped two Chinese engineers working on a multi-million dollar hydroelectric dam project in the South Waziristan tribal area.

One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid. Mehsud died last year when he blew himself up to avoid arrest.—AFP