Pakistani authorities have launched a search operation to trace and recover two polio vaccination workers abducted by armed men, officials said on Wednesday.

A four-member polio monitoring team, comprising a woman, was kidnapped by armed men in the Tank District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province earlier on Tuesday. 

The kidnappers released the woman and driver hours later.

“We are trying to trace the missing members of the polio monitoring team,” Muhammad Tahir, a police official from Tank, told dpa.

Tahir said that the polio monitoring team had been travelling without security guards.

The kidnappers are yet to make any demands so far.

No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, even though militants have attacked and killed polio workers and security officials in the past.

According to the health ministry, more than 60 people, including health workers and security personnel, have lost their lives during polio vaccination campaigns since 2012.

Militants had accused the health workers of acting as spies and claimed that the polio vaccine was intended to make Muslim children sterile.

Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan were among the few countries where new polio cases still surfaced.

Pakistan had only one case of polio in 2021, but 20 new cases were reported in 2022, all from the violence-stricken province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Only three new cases have been reported this year so far.

(dpa/NAN)