Five Czech nationals and a Lebanese taxi driver went missing Saturday in a possible abduction in east Lebanon, a security source told The Daily Star.
Their car was found abandoned 300 meters away from a military checkpoint at dawn in the West Bekaa town of Kefraya, the source said.
The father of 50-year-old taxi driver Saeb Mounir Taan, who was transporting the Czechs, filed a missing persons report Saturday morning after his son failed to return to his home in the southern town of Ansar, in the district of Nabatieh.
The five Czech nationals, aged between 25 and 47, had entered Lebanon twice during the past few months, the source said.
They first entered Lebanon on May 15 and left on July 1, and reentered the country on July 7, the source added.
The source said Taan's car was registered and legal to operate.
Luggage, a leather bag that contained Lebanese, Czech and Euro currencies, and three cameras were found scattered in the car.
The cameras, one of them a video recorder, are believed to belong to the five missing Czechs.
The state-run National News Agency said the military is conducting searches of hotels and has set up new checkpoints across the West Bekaa in an effort to locate the six.
Czech authorities will hold a crisis meeting at 17.00 Prague time to discuss the matter, local news site iDNES.cz reported.
Czech Ambassador to Lebanon Svatopluk Cumba told the website that the five Czechs are tourists with authentic passports.
The website said that local authorities did not rule out the possibility of abduction.
Taan, the Lebanese taxi driver, comes from the same village of a man who was arrested in the Czech capital Prague last year over suspicion of terrorism and drug trafficking, and is being sought for extradition by U.S. authorities.
The family of Ali Fayad held protests earlier this year outside the U.S. and Czech embassies calling for his release.
It was unclear if the case of the missing tourists was in any way linked to that of Fayad, but kidnappings for the purpose of exchanging prisoners or hostages is not unheard of in Lebanon.
In 2013, two Turkish pilots were abducted near the Beirut airport by families of the nine Shiite pilgrims who were abducted by rebels in northern Syria the previous year. The pilots were released two months later after Turkey intervened to secure the release of the pilgrims.
