Kidnapped Pakistan polio team released
A six-member polio vaccination team was released by their
captors Wednesday, two days after gunmen kidnapped them in southwest Pakistan,
officials said.
A polio worker, his driver and four tribal police guards
were abducted on Monday after administering polio drops in Awaran town, 700
kilometres (435 miles) west of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich
Baluchistan province bordering Iran and Afghanistan.
The kidnapping was the latest setback to efforts to
eradicate the disease in Pakistan -- one of only three countries in the world
where the crippling virus is still endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.
"The vaccination team members, who had been snatched on
gunpoint by over a dozen armed men Monday evening, returned to Awaran town
Wednesday morning," senior local police official Rafiq Lasi told AFP.
He said the kidnapped men were released on the intervention
of the local tribal elders. A senior local administration official Bashir
Baluch also confirmed the development.
No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping but
militant groups see vaccination campaigns as a cover for espionage, and there
are also long-running rumours about polio drops causing infertility.
More than 40 people, including health workers and police
guarding the teams which administer polio drops to children, have been killed
in Pakistan since December 2012.
Masked gunmen kidnapped another six-member polio vaccination
team southwest of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan earlier this month. Their
whereabouts are currently unknown.
According to the Word HO, Pakistan recorded 91 cases of polio
last year, up from 58 in 2012. Victims are left dead, paralysed or with
withered limbs.
Pakistan's failure to defeat polio stands in stark contrast
to its neighbour and great rival India, which recently celebrated the
eradication of polio three years after its last case.
Baluchistan, one of Pakistan's most unstable provinces, is
rife with separatist and Islamist militants and is plagued by sectarian
bloodshed.
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