LARKANA, Jan 18: A peace caravan marched from here to the Kuthca area on Sunday to appeal to the bandits to release the kidnapped victims.

The participants included women, children and Syeds and crossed the Indus river near Akil village, carrying the Holy Quran.

After entering the forest, they observed silence for a few minutes and before returning left letters for the chiefs of the bandits' gangs, imploring them to release the hostages in the name of humanity. They left Dupattas in the forest as a sign of appeal from the women relatives of hostages.

According to the police, there are six people in the captivity of the bandits but the area people insist that the number of the hostages is 16.

STRIKE: A strike was observed in the city on Sunday to protest against the murder of Pakistan People's Party (Shaheed Bhutto) leader Ali Sonara.

Markets and business centres of the city remained closed. Activists of the Sindh People's Students Federation (SB) took to the roads and burnt tyres at roundabouts.

At least eight workers of the SPSF-SB including Hub Ali Khoso, Zubair Lahori, Ihsan Shah, Aijaz Tunio, Nawaz Rind, Khadim Malgani, Irshad Chandio and Nisar Shaikh were arrested. Normality returned to the city in the evening.

BLOOD BANKS: The Safe Blood Transfusion Authority, Sindh has found three blood banks in the city unfit for carrying out blood scanning as they were devoid of required material.

SBTA focal person Dr Farooque Rehman Soomro told this correspondentthat he had visited the Larkana, Ali and Hina blood banks and found that they were not meeting the standard set by the SBTA.

He said the head office was informed about the situation while the laboratory owners were asked to update the facilities mandatory for running the blood banks and in the meantime they would be asked to seek registration, essential to run such laboratories.

Dr Soomro said all the blood banks working in the district would be registered with the safe blood transfusion authority to avoid the spread of communicable diseases and curb the illegal sale of blood.