7 Sep 2012

Pakistan orders out aid agency's foreign staff

6:06 am on 7 September 2012

Save the Children foreign staff have been ordered to leave Pakistan, the charity has confirmed.

The aid agency is among many foreign charities that have come under pressure since the operation in which Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May last year, the BBC reports.

Pakistani intelligence officials accuse Save the Children of involvement, a claim the group denies. The charity says it has been given no reason for the expulsion order.

After the raid a Pakistani doctor was arrested for helping the CIA track him. It emerged that Dr Shakil Afridi had been running a fake vaccination programme on behalf of the US intelligence service as part of efforts to track bin Laden. Media reports say Dr Afridi was in contact with staff of the charity.

The charity, which has operations all over the world, has worked in Pakistan for more than 30 years.

Six of its 2,000 staff in Pakistan are foreigners. It is not thought the forthcoming expulsions will have any significant impact on its operations in the short term, the BBC says.