A POLICE chief has admitted he is concerned for the safety of a couple who mysteriously vanished, leaving two children.Farik Farukh, from Southend, drove to Ipswich with his partner Inga Losiene's children on the day she was last seen near their Essex home, last Friday.

A POLICE chief has admitted he is concerned for the safety of a couple who mysteriously vanished, leaving two children.

Farik Farukh, from Southend, drove to Ipswich with his partner Inga Losiene's children on the day she was last seen near their Essex home, last Friday.

Mr Farukh, an Iraqi Kurd, also went missing two days later and police are investigating the couple's disappearance.

They are currently questioning the two children, a girl aged 11 and a boy aged six.

Dave Colwell, Acting Detective Chief Inspector with Essex Police, said part of the investigation was to establish why Mr Farukh made the car trip from south Essex to Ipswich and what he did in Suffolk.

Police revealed yesterday they had found a car belonging to the couple abandoned on the A14 near Trimley St Martin.

The couple's disappearance is being treated as a missing persons' inquiry and detectives say they are keeping an open mind as to what may have happened.

Mr Farukh was last seen at the seafront pub where he works in Southend on Sunday evening.

He had left his partner's children with friends on Saturday evening, Mr Colwell said.

When he did not show up to collect them after work on Sunday, the alarm was raised and it was discovered that their mother, Ms Losiene, had disappeared two days earlier.

Officers said it was known that Mr Farukh, 32, had collected the two children from school in Southend on Friday afternoon and had driven them to Ipswich.

It is not known where they stayed that night but, as he drove off the next morning, it is believed the car broke down and Mr Farukh had to flag down an elderly couple to get a lift to the nearest railway station.

Mr Farukh's blue-grey Rover car was found beside the A14 near Trimley St Martin on Thursday and it is now being forensically examined.

An elderly couple came forward yesterday morning and said they had given a man fitting Mr Farukh's description and two young children a lift to Felixstowe Railway Station on Saturday. They are now being questioned by police as part of the investigation.

It is believed that, after the couple dropped Mr Farukh and the children at the station, the trio then took a number of trains back to Southend.

Detectives are speaking to the children, who are being cared for by relatives in Southend, in a bid to trace the couple, who shared a house in the town's York Road.

Mr Colwell said they were trying to establish where Mr Farukh and the children stayed on Friday night after driving to Ipswich.

He added: "The information is coming from young children so it's very sensitive.

"It's difficult to get all the facts but we are slowly piecing the jigsaw together."

Asked why he thought Mr Farukh's car ended up in Trimley if he was trying to drive from Ipswich to Southend, Mr Colwell said: "He may have taken the wrong road, the wrong track, and then the car has broken down."

Mr Colwell appealed to the couple to contact their family or members of the community.

He added: "I am concerned about their safety, that's why we are treating them as missing persons.

"We need to talk to them to see what happened. At the moment we are treating this as a missing persons' inquiry and we would ask them to come forward to the nearest police station."

An Essex Police spokesman added: "We are treating them as missing and there is nothing to suggest anything sinister, but we can't rule anything out."

Ms Losiene is described as 5ft 4ins to 5ft 8ins tall, with shoulder length dyed blonde hair and blue eyes. She may be wearing a gold necklace.

Mr Farukh is of Middle Eastern appearance with dark hair.

Anyone with any information should contact Essex Police on 01268 775588.