Doctor who helped track bin Laden sacked

PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Thursday sacked a government surgeon recruited by the CIA to help track Al-Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden, officials said.

Doctor Shakeel Afridi was sacked on disciplinary grounds by the government in northwest province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where bin Laden was killed during a clandestine US raid last May.

"The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has issued a notification of dismissal of Dr Shakeel Afridi," provincial health secretary Ashfaq Khan told AFP.

Seventeen other medics who worked on the same fake vaccination programme set up by the CIA in a bid to confirm bin Laden was living in the city of Abbottabad have already been sacked, he added.

Fifteen women health workers were dismissed last August, and a woman doctor and an assistant coordinator were sacked on March 17, Khan said. (AFP)