Militants Release 11 Pakistani Teachers Seized During Polio Vaccination Campaign; Karachi Suspends Immunizations

“Militants released on Tuesday 11 teachers who had been kidnapped in Pakistan’s lawless northwest during a polio vaccination campaign last week, local officials said,” Reuters reports. Islamist militants seized the teachers “on November 21 from a school in the Khyber tribal agency, one of the semi autonomous tribal areas along [the] border with Afghanistan,” the news agency writes, noting, “A tribal elder, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the militants freed the teachers on condition the government stop sending polio teams to the area” (Ahmed, 11/26). A “[p]olio vaccination campaign was suspended in three districts of Karachi over security concerns on Monday, officials said,” Pakistan Today reports. “[S]ources said that the fresh campaign was scheduled to start from Monday but the administration failed to provide proper security to the polio teams,” so immunizations were suspended, the newspaper writes, noting, “More than a dozen anti-polio workers have been killed by extremists in various areas of the country” (11/25).

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