The ICRC said its health programme manager Khalil Rasjed Dale was seized around lunchtime. The ICRC said Dale was taken as he returned home from work but police, quoting witnesses, said he was abducted in front of his office by eight masked gunmen who were lying in wait for him. One opened the door of Dale's Land Cruiser and kidnapped him at gunpoint, police said. "The moment Dale reached in front of his office, unknown gunmen riding a Land Cruiser picked him and took him away," Nazir Kurd, a senior police official in Quetta told AFP. Kurd said Dale -- initially named by police as Khalil Ahmad Dale -- is a British Muslim and has been working in Quetta for a year. The ICRC office is in a high security neighbourhood along with offices of other international organisations. A statement from the humanitarian organisation called for Dale's "swift and unconditional release" and said it had no information about the identities or motives of his captors.