ISLAMABAD, Oct 15: Security forces on Friday stepped up their hunt for Abdullah Mehsud, an Al Qaeda-linked former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who had masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers, government officials said.

In a commando operation, one of the Chinese and five kidnappers were killed on Thursday. Abdullah Mehsud, who spent 25 months in the US-run Camp X-ray until his release in March, had ordered the kidnapping to pressurize the government into halting counter-terrorism operations in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

"Our security forces are all geared up and we are taking all measures to bring to justice those behind the kidnapping," Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed told AFP.

He said the kidnapping was a conspiracy to hurt Pakistan-China relations, adding that Islamabad would do "everything to eliminate such a threat." "We have to hunt him down. Now we will evolve a strategy and do some planning," a security official told Reuters. "The man has become too big for his shoes."

Journalists have been taken to meet Abdullah Mehsud at secret locations by tribal go-betweens and he could prove difficult to find as he has been using a long-range cordless telephone harder to detect than a satellite phone. But the man may find it difficult to evade the capture too long after angering the members of his own tribe who had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the release of the Chinese hostages.

"By kidnapping the Chinese citizens, Mehsud and his handful of supporters have lost all respect," said National Assembly member Maulana Mirajuddin Khan, who had led this effort.

"They have disgraced the movement against US influence in the region," he told the Washington Post. "I've a feeling Abdullah will soon get a missile through his window just like Nek Mohammad," said a diplomat, referring to another militant killed a couple of months back in an operation. "The military doesn't like Robin Hoods floating around the tribal areas," he added. -Agencies