OTTAWA -- Canada's foreign affairs department says it is investigating reports that a Canadian citizen has been kidnapped in Afghanistan.

The Pak Tribune, a Pakistan news service, reports two foreign citizens - an American woman and a Canadian man - were taken Wednesday by armed Taliban insurgents on their way from southern Ghazni province to the central capital of Kabul.

A Taliban commander in Syedabad confirmed the abduction, the newspaper reports.

Ghazni Public Health Director Baz M. Himmat told the paper a woman's body was brought to the civil hospital by Afghan soldiers, but she has not been identified.

The soldiers found her slain along the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

The Khaama Press, an Afghan online newspaper, said both are civilians.

Kidnappings are a common occurrence in Afghanistan and at least two Canadians have been a victim in the past.

CBC journalist Mellissa Fung was captured in 2008 and held for 28 days before being released.

Colin Mackenzie Rutherford, from Toronto, went missing in Ghazni in Afghanistan in 2010. A man identifying himself as Rutherford later appeared in a video released by the Taliban in May 2011 saying he had been kidnapped and was being treated "humanely" by his captors.
His status is unknown.