A Japanese journalist and his Afghan assistant were shot and wounded on Friday in a kidnap attempt near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, while security forces killed at least four rebels in an adjoining north-western district, police said according to dpa. Motoki Yotsukura, a reporter with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, and his Afghan colleague Abdul Sami Yousafzai were travelling in a chauffeur-driven car when they were ambushed on the outskirts of Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province. The driver reacted quickly and was able to speed away to the next police station at Hayatabad, said Banaras Khan, a local police officer. "A bullet hit the Japanese journalist in the leg but he was in stable condition and was transported to Islamabad," Khan said. According to the officer, Yousafzai was being treated in a hospital in Peshawar. Both journalists had gone to the neighbouring Khyber tribal district to interview some militants and were returning to Peshawar when they were attacked, a law enforcer said. "We were not informed about their movement," he added. The abduction bid came a day after gunmen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat, Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, after killing his Pakistani guard in Hayatabad. Attarzadeh, a commercial attache to the Iranian consulate, is still missing.
