Islamabad - Gunmen on Thursday ambushed a car carrying an Iranian diplomat in north-western Pakistan and kidnapped the envoy after killing his guard, officials and media reports said.

Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, a commercial attache, was seized when he was travelling to the Iranian consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the troubled North West Frontier Province.

The kidnappers intercepted the vehicle in Hayatabad, an upscale suburban neighbourhood where suspected Taliban militants also abducted the Afghan ambassador-designate Abdul Khaleq Farahi in late September.

"Gunmen boxed Mr Attarzadeh's car in and shot dead the police guard in the vehicle," the Hayatabad police station chief, Banaras Khan, said.

According to Khan, the attackers bundled the Iranian diplomat into their vehicle and whisked off.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

Khan said police had sealed off routes leading out of the city and were carrying out a search operation to recover the diplomat.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in separate statements, strongly condemned the abduction of Attarzadeh, committing the government to take "all necessary measures for his safe and early recovery."

The abduction came a day after gunmen killed a US aid worker and his driver in University Town, another highly-guarded locality in Peshawar, which shares boundaries with the restive tribal region.

"The recent kidnappings of diplomats could be a fallout of security operations in Peshawar and the tribal areas," the Urdu-language Geo News channel quoted the city's police chief, Suleman Khan, as saying.

Pakistani security forces are fighting Islamist insurgents on at least three fronts near the Afghan border.

Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants holed up in the lawless frontier region have intensified their activities in settled areas after the surge in US attacks on their hideouts in the tribal areas from where they also launch attacks on international forces in Afghanistan. (dpa)