Around 400 students are said to be kidnapped by the Taliban militants in the northwest Pakistan while they were traveling in a mini bus.

Taliban fighters with hand grenades seized the military college students’ convoy heading home for the summer holidays from the North Waziristan ethnic Pashtun region on the Afghan border to the town of Bannu, which is located at 240 km from the southwest of Islamabad.

Bannu Police Chief Iqbal Marwat said up to 400 people in 28 vehicles were kidnapped and 67 have escaped.

The escaped students said that they witnessed a Taliban carrying a hand grenade boarded each of the buses and took them away.

Militant attacks are found to happen more often on the Pakistani soil since mid-2007, with attacks on security forces, and on government and Western targets.

There are several Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked groups based in North Waziristan in a loose alliance with Taliban in Swat. So this has alarmed the United States, which needs Pakistani action to help defeat Al Qaeda and get to grips with the Taliban insurgency in the neighboring Afghanistan.

Militants have showed their focus in kidnapping the Pakistani Security Forces rather than the civilians.

Mirza Mohammad Jihadi, an adviser to the Prime Minister on the tribal areas, said efforts were in progress to secure their release.

''Contacts have been established with the kidnappers and talks are under way,'' Jihadi told the reporters.