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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) understands a New Zealand principal who survived a Taleban kidnapping attempt at a Pakistan school is okay and has not asked for any assistance.
A Taleban militant was killed and a guard was shot and wounded on Sunday as gunmen stormed the Muslim Public School Surrani at Bannu, where 46-year-old Auckland-born Stephen Jonathon Rykers is principal.
The town is in Pakistan's north west frontier province, a stronghold of Taleban militants and their Pakistani allies.
In March, gunmen kidnapped and held for several days the principal of a school in Tank where police had earlier prevented militants from recruiting students.
MFAT said Mr Rykers had not asked for any assistance from it. "We have spoken to the school and local authorities and they have said he is okay," a ministry spokeswoman said.
"We will keep in touch with them."
It was understood Mr Rykers was not in the town any more. MFAT said it had had no confirmation of where he was.
Mr Rykers, who has been working in Pakistan for 15 years, called his father after the armed attack on Sunday night to let him know he was safe.
Neville Rykers, who lives in Australia, said he had not been able to reach his son since his call and believed he might have gone into hiding.
"I think he's somewhere else in the country at the moment. I know he's not at the school, and one of the guys at the school is trying to get a telephone number for me," he told the New Zealand Herald.
Mr Rykers told his father that a group of five men, who he believed were Taleban members, arrived outside his school in a Nissan car.
"They put a ladder up and climbed over the wall. When the guy came over the wall, the security guard at Stephen's school shot him dead, but at the same time the guy returned the fire and wounded the guard. The others then fled."
Mr Rykers said his son didn't think the gunmen were trying to capture him specifically.
"He sounded quite clear that he thought it was just a Taleban attack because they have been attacking all sorts of things in the area."
But Pakistan's International News website said the raid was an attempt to kidnap Mr Rykers.
A police officer from the town, Mehrullah Khan, said the injured guard told investigators that five or six armed men broke into the school demanding to know where they could find the principal.
Mr Rykers went to Pakistan about 15 years ago to work as the principal of the school, but ended up buying a large share of it so he could improve the way things were done there, his father said.
"He's spent a lot of his life over there helping the kids and giving them an education."
He looked like a local. "He's got the moustache and the swarthy complexion and wears the kaftan and all that sort of stuff. He's been readily accepted for most of the time but this seems to have gone a bit haywire," Mr Rykers snr said.
- NZPA
