PESHAWAR Gunmen have kidnapped an Afghan government official as he was visiting his in-laws in a Pakistani border town, police said Monday.

Akhtar Kohistani, an adviser at the ministry of rural development, was whisked away from Chitral town late Sunday, hours after he arrived to see relatives in Pakistan, local police chief Sher Akbar told AFP.

The abduction was the latest in a series since Afghanistans ambassador-designate to Pakistan, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was kidnapped in Pakistan in September.

`Unknown people knocked at his door late Sunday, requesting to meet Kohistani,` but as soon as he came out he was bundled into a car and taken away, the officer said.

`We are investigating the incident`, which happened in a small village in the Darosh district of Chitral region, bordering the troubled Afghan province of Nuristan, he added.

Police were trying to identify the kidnappers, who could have come from Afghanistan. `He may have been taken to Afghanistan,` the officer said.

No group has claimed responsibility and no demand has been received so far, police said.

Last Friday unidentified men kidnapped Zia ul-Haq, the brother of the Afghan revenue minister Anwar ul-Haq, who had been living in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, police said.

A professor of Jalalabads Aryana University, Abdul Haq Danishmal, was abducted from the tribal Khyber region last week.

Police say there has been a surge in kidnapping for ransom in the North West Frontier Province and the rugged tribal region, and blame mainly militant groups.

Suspected Taliban militants earlier this year abducted the Pakistani ambassador to Kabul, Tariq Azizuddin, when he was driving from Peshawar to Afghanistan via the Khyber tribal district.

The Pakistan envoy was released in May after 96 days of captivity.