Pakistani gunmen free 250 child hostages
US diplomat found dead in his Islamabad home
Gunmen who took up to 250 Pakistani school children hostage on Monday in a northwestern town freed them all and surrendered to tribal elders, a government spokesman said.
Violence and lawlessness has spread across Pakistan in recent months, seeping out of remote tribal regions on the Afghan border into cities and towns, raising fears about the stability of the nuclear-armed U.S. ally.
"All the children have been released and the criminals have surrendered to the jirga," said interior ministry spokesman Javel Iqbal Cheema. A jirga is a council of tribal elders. Cheema said none of the children was hurt.
Cheema said the gunmen were members of a kidnap gang but government officials and police had earlier said there were about seven Islamist militants holding the children in the school in Bannu town.
President Pervez Musharraf told a news conference in London the gunmen were "extremists".
The gunmen fled into the school in the North West Frontier Province town and took the children hostage after they had kidnapped a health department official and his driver, police said.
US diplomat found dead
A U.S. diplomat was found dead at his home in the Pakistani capital on Monday after apparently shooting himself in the head, police said.
The U.S. embassy in Islamabad named the official as Keith Ryan and said in a statement that his death would be investigated but that there were no indications of foul play.
"He was found dead at his home. A bullet hit his head," a Pakistani investigation official said. "Apparently he committed suicide, but we are investigating from all possible angles."
Officials from the U.S. embassy and medical teams arrived at the scene before police were alerted, the investigator said.
A senior security official also said that the U.S. diplomat was found dead at his home in Islamabad after a suspected suicide.
"Our esteemed colleague, Mr Keith Ryan, passed away this morning in Islamabad," the U.S. statement said, without mentioning the cause of death.
"There will be a full investigation; however, there does not appear to have been any foul play," it said.