A large number of paramilitary soldiers went missing in Pakistan's northwestern tribal area on Thursday, local TV channels reported.

The Aaj TV channel reported that 110 paramilitary soldiers from Frontier Corps were traveling in 18 vehicles when armed men kidnapped them in South Waziristan. The soldiers were going from Wana, the center of South Waziristan, to Ladha, a town in the region on Thursday afternoon.

Another TV channel Geo reported that the militants snatched arms from scores of soldiers and held them hostage.

"Some groups have not reached at their destinations but they can not be called as missing," the army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said, adding that the army was trying to check where they are.

Arshad said that the weather in the region was bad and there was possibility that they had camped somewhere. He said he did not know about the exact figures of the soldiers who had not reached at their destinations.

It was the third incident of kidnapping of soldiers in less than a month in the same region. Local militants kidnapped 20 security men in two groups this month and beheaded one of them. The remaining 19 were freed this week after tribal elders held series of talks with the kidnappers.

The security situation in the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan deteriorated since local militants in North Waziristan on July 15 scrapped a peace deal signed with the government in September last year.

The militants continually launched attacks on security forces and triggered clashes that left more than 250 militants and 60 security men dead since early July.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2007)