DERA ISMAIL: A police officer says his force killed two suspected Pakistani Taliban militants in a successful 24-hour standoff to retrieve three kidnapped government workers.

Imtiaz Shah said on Monday that two other militants blew themselves up during the standoff near the town of Dera Ismail Khan in northwest Pakistan.

Nobody else was harmed.

Shah, the Dera Ismail Khan Police chief, said the militants kidnapped the three workers from a state-run insurance company on Saturday.

Police followed the militants and surrounded them in a village shortly before they were going to take the workers to South Waziristan, a key Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan's tribal region.