Pakistani rebels release American

An American U.N. worker abducted more than two months ago turned up Saturday, lying alongside a road in western Pakistan with his hands and feet bound, pleading “Help me,” said the man who found him.

John Solecki was found in a village 30 miles south of Quetta near the Afghan border after his captors called a local news agency to tell them where to look, officials said.

Mohammed Anwar, who owns a restaurant along the main highway to Karachi, said he found Solecki in the dirt near a wall.

Solecki made no public comment. United Nations officials who met with him Saturday reported that he was “tired but all right,” spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said.

Solecki, who headed the U.N. refugee agency’s operations in Quetta, will be reunited with his family “as soon as possible,” Pagonis said.

A previously unknown group, the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, had threatened to behead Solecki. But ethnic Baluch separatists have no record of taking or killing Western hostages.

The kidnappers had demanded the release of hundreds of people from detention by Pakistani security agencies.

Solecki’s release was a rare piece of good news. A suicide attack Saturday killed eight at a paramilitary base.