The security forces rescued eight out of the 17 abducted workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lakki Marwat on Thursday, sources said.

Earlier in the day, terrorists associated with the banned Fitnal Khawarij group abducted 17 civilian workers for extortion in the Qabol Khel area of Laki Marwat.

The workers were unarmed at the time of their abduction. After the kidnapping, sources said that the terrorists also set fire to a local contractor’s vehicle.

They added that such actions by the terrorist group in Pakistan “are in no way connected to religion or Islamic values.”

Efforts are underway to rescue the remaining unarmed workers, sources said and added that operations are underway to address the situation. Those responsible for the heinous act would be brought to justice, they added.

Separately, AFP while citing an official reported the eight government workers were kidnapped from a mining site, with three wounded in a shootout with their militant captors.

Another eight hostages who were being held in a separate location were still missing, an official from the KP government told the foreign news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the report, the banned terrorist group Fitnal Khawarij had kidnapped the workers.

The men were on their way to a mining site run by the state-run Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in the remote Lakki Marwat district when they were kidnapped on Wednesday, the official said.

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Lakki Marwat district is one of several areas close to the border with Afghanistan that has experienced a spike in militancy over the past several years.

Pakistan accuses the Afghan government of allowing militancy to flourish in the border regions, a charge that Kabul denies.

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defence, is charged with researching atomic energy and its uses in the fields of agriculture, medicine and industry.

A district official who asked not to be named told AFP that the site was being mined for uranium.