Hours before a deadline set by kidnappers to kill a US hostage was due to expire Thursday, the government announced a top-level committee to investigate the captors demands. The shadowy Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) said it had abducted John Solecki, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Quetta.
It threatened to kill him unless more than 1,100 people on a list of "prisoners" it provided were freed. "We have set up a high-level committee, including high-ranking officials and politicians, to locate the whereabouts of the alleged missing persons listed by the Balochistan Liberation United Front," the provincial government said in a statement.
It said it had already located some of those on the groups list. "Forty-five people have been traced and their location confirmed out of the list of 1,109 people allegedly missing. Some of these people are at their houses and some are in judicial custody facing a variety of criminal charges."
It said that of the 141 women on the list, seven had been identified and located at various places in the province. "An intensive effort is under way to find out about the other people allegedly missing," it said.
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