QUETTA: Unidentified gunmen have kidnapped two women tourists from the Czech Republic in Pakistan's insurgency-hit southwestern province of Baluchistan, officials say.

Local government officials said the women entered the province from Iran as tourists and were abducted from an area some 550 kilometres west of Quetta, the main town of Baluchistan which borders both Iran and Afghanistan.

"Both the women were from Czech Republic and entered in Pakistan as tourists," Akbar Hussain Durrani, the provincial home secretary told AFP. "Gunmen stopped their bus in the Nok Kundi area of Chaghi district and abducted both of them."

Mr Durrani said women were being escorted by a tribal policeman when they were abducted. The guard was also taken captive but was later freed.

Nobody from the Czech embassy was available to comment late on Wednesday but Qambar Dashti, a senior government official in Quetta confirmed the incident.

Kidnappings plague parts of Baluchistan and northwest Pakistan, where criminals looking for ransom snatch foreigners and locals, sometimes passing their hostages on to Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked groups.

Baluchistan has been hit by an insurgency in recent years with Baluch nationalists demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the province's wealth of natural oil, gas and mineral resources.

AFP