Gunmen have kidnapped two foreign women aid workers and their three local colleagues in a remote province in northeast Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

“Yesterday evening, five health workers, including two female foreign nationals, were kidnapped in the Yaftal area,” Abdul Mahroof Rasikh, the spokesman for the governor of Badakhshan province, told AFP.

The group had been travelling on horseback when they were attacked and police have launched a search for them, believing they had been taken to Shahri Buzurg district east of the provincial capital Faizabad, he said.

The incident was confirmed by the head of the Badakhshan provincial council, Zabihullah Attiq, who said the group was “snatched at gunpoint by seven armed men.”

Badakhshan is an impoverished and mountainous province in Afghanistan’s far northeast bordering Pakistan, and while mainly quiet there have been pockets of insurgent activity.

Taliban insurgents waging a war against the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai have been responsible for kidnappings in the past, but armed gangs are also known to hold people for ransom.

In August 2010, the Taliban claimed responsibility for killing a group of eight medical aid workers in Badakhshan, claiming they were “Christian missionaries.” (AFP)