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KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen in Pakistan kidnapped the brother of Afghanistan's finance minister as he was returning to his mother's home from prayers, Afghan officials said Sunday.

He was at least the third person with ties to the Afghan government to be abducted in Pakistan's lawless border region, used by al-Qaida and Taliban militants as a base to attacks U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Zia ul-Haq Ahadi was visiting his sick mother in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and was abducted on Friday as he returned to her home from a neighborhood mosque, said Abdul Razaq, an assistant to the finance minister. The kidnapped man's brother is Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahadim.

No demands had been made, and the kidnappers have not contacted officials or the Ahadi family, said the Finance Ministry spokesman, Haziz Shams.

"We have no clues so far," said a police chief in Peshawar, Kashif Alam.

In February, Taliban gunmen kidnapped Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan on the main highway between Peshawar and the Afghan-Pakistan border. He was freed after three months.

In September, gunmen ambushed a car carrying Afghanistan's ambassador-designate to Pakistan, Abdul Kahliq Farahi, who was still being held.

And in August, the top U.S. diplomat in northwestern Pakistan narrowly escaped an attempt on her life when two men with AK-47s jumped in front of her armored vehicle and sprayed it with bullets as she left her home in Peshawar.

In Afghanistan's south, the U.S. military said in a statement that one of its spy planes, a Predator, crashed Sunday. The statement did not specify the location of the crash, but said it was under investigation.

U.S. troops with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force shot and wounded five Afghan army soldiers in eastern Kunar province Sunday. The troops fired on what they thought were militant forces, a NATO statement said.

"It is with deep regret that this incident has taken place; we have initiated an investigation to determine how this happened and how to prevent any future occurrences," said Col. John Spiszer, U.S. commander.