UN officials confirm two workers have gone missing in Karachi

UNICEF can confirm that two of its national staff went missing on Thursday evening in Karachi: official statement.

KARACHI: A United Nations spokesperson has confirmed that two of its local employees – both working for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) have gone missing.

Both the local employees of Unicef went missing on Sunday and they are thought to have been kidnapped, stated a senior police official.

They disappeared on Thursday, confirmed the UN spokesperson Vittorio Cammarota in a statement.

“Unicef can confirm that two of its national staff went missing on Thursday evening in Karachi. The police are managing the investigation and are in close contact with the families and so is the Unicef country office,” it said.

“It is very possible that they might have been kidnapped,” senior police official Javed Alam Odho told AFP on Sunday, adding they were in Karachi for a picnic at a resort on the outskirts of the city.

Muhammad Samad, another police official, said the wife of one staffer had informed the police about his husband going missing and subsequently a search had begun.

Dispute over jurisdiction

The two UN employees — Farrukh and Sami — had come from Hyderabad to visit a family resort on Thursday and since then are missing.

The Gulshan-e-Maymar and the Sohrab Goth police stations dispute the jurisdiction of the incident. When contacted, the Sohrab Goth DSP Qamar Ahmed told The Express Tribune that the Gulshan-e-Maymar police was investigating the case as the incident took place within their jurisdiction.

Until Friday evening, there were also conflicting reports about the two men being UN employees with UNHCR initially denying that any of its employees were missing.