**The FBI is investigating the arrest in Pakistan of five reported US men on suspicion of extremist links.**The men were arrested in a raid on a house in Sarghoda in eastern Punjab province, Pakistan’s US embassy told the BBC.
The FBI has said it is investigating whether they are the same men who were reported missing from their homes in the US state of Virginia last month.
The US State Department said it was also seeking information on the men.
Three of them are reported to be of Pakistani descent, one of Egyptian heritage and the other of a Yemeni background.
“If they are American citizens, we of course are going to be very interested in the charges that they’ve been detained on and in what sort of circumstances they’re being held,” said spokesman Ian Kelly.
FBI spokeswoman Katherine Schweit said the agency was aware of the arrests and was in contact with the families of the missing students.
“We are working with Pakistan authorities to determine their identities and the nature of their business there, if indeed these are the students who had gone missing,” she said.
The Pakistani embassy in Washington said the men were arrested in a house belonging to an uncle of one of them.
He said the house was already of interest to local police and that no charges had yet been filed against the arrested men.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to comment on the arrests, reported the Reuters news agency, but said the US had to “work more closely with both Afghanistan and Pakistan to try to root out the infrastructure of terrorism that continues to recruit and train people”.
The five students were reported missing from their homes in northern Virginia by their families in late November.