John Solecki, an American kidnapped in Pakistan while working for a UN refugee agency, was still alive, a spokesman for the separatist group holding him said on Monday after media reports that he had been killed.
Pakistani television channels had run a headline saying the Press Club in the southwestern city of Quetta had received an anonymous telephone call saying Solecki had been killed and his body would be left in a couple of hours.
A spokesman for the previously unheard of Baluchistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) later telephoned a Pakistani news agency office in Quetta to deny any call had been made from the group, and to confirm that Solecki was alive.
"He is alive," a spokesman, Shahak Baluch, said in a call to Online news agency. "We have not made any call."
Solecki, head of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees in Baluchistan province, was abducted on February 2 by gunmen who ambushed his car and shot dead his driver in the provincial capital, Quetta.