PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Militants in northwestern Pakistan have kidnapped 11 teachers involved in a polio vaccination campaign.



Local official Khyali Gul said on November 23 that the teachers were taken from the private Hira Public School in the Bara area of the Khyber tribal agency close to Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan.



He said the gunmen kidnapped the teachers immediately after they had administered polio vaccines.





Gul said the teachers were taken to an area controlled by militant leader Mangal Bagh and his Taliban-affiliated Lashkar-e Islam group.



The kidnapping is the latest in a string of attacks on health workers trying to eradicate the crippling disease.



Taliban militants accuse health workers of being Western spies or part of a plot to sterilize Muslims.



With reporting by Reuters

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