ISLAMABAD: Ethnic tribal rebels in Pakistan’s insurgency-hit southwestern province of Balochistan claimed yesterday that they were holding captive a UN top official kidnapped in the region earlier this week, a local media report said.

The private news agency Online said the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF), a secular and nationalist guerrilla organization in Balochistan, had claimed responsibility for the abduction of the local head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

John Solecki, an American national, was snatched on Monday after unknown gunmen shot dead his driver in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. The BLUF, which is seeking separation of the Pakistan’s natural resources rich but poverty-stricken province, said the UN official was abducted to bring the plight of the people of Balochistan to the UN’s attention.

“We have set three demands for the release of Solecki,” Mir Shehek Baloch, who claimed to be a BLUF spokesman, told Online newswire via satellite phone from an undisclosed location. “We want the UN to secure the release of 141 Baloch women held in the torture cells of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, provide information about our 6,000 missing comrades, and resolve the issue of the independence of Balochistan under Geneva Convention,” he said.

Meanwhile, Taleban fighters beheaded a Polish hostage in Pakistan yesterday, according to a spokesman for the militants who said the body wouldn’t be handed over until some captured Taleban were released.

Speaking in Germany, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his government had received “unofficial confirmation” Piotr Stancza, an engineer and a father of one, had been killed.

“We do not have a solid proof but we have received unofficial confirmation that this tragedy indeed took place,” Tusk told reporters in Munich in comments broadcast live on Polish TV.

The Taleban spokesman, identified only as Mohammed, told reporters Stancza, 42, was killed because Pakistani authorities failed to free the militants before a deadline expired at midnight on Friday. “We have killed the man after authorities refused to release our colleagues,” the Taleban spokesman told Reuters.

— With input from agencies