Pakistan's government has ordered foreign staff members of Save the Children to leave the country, the international aid group said today.

The group has recently come under Pakistani government scrutiny because of reports that it helped facilitate meetings between the U.S. and a doctor who allegedly helped hunt down Osama bin Laden, a charge which the group has vehemently denied. The expulsion order comes among heightened suspicion of foreigners in Pakistan in the aftermath of the al-Qaeda leader's killing.

Cicely McWilliam, with Save the Children, said the organization still hasn't been made aware of the reason for the expulsion.

“We have been informed by the Pakistani Ministry of Interior that visas for our six international staff in Pakistan may not be renewed,” McWilliam told CBC News.

"We are still unclear as to the reason for this, and we are urgently seeking clarification. Like many other NGOs in Pakistan, there have been ongoing problems with securing visas over the last 15 months.”

However, McWilliam said that the vast majority of the Save the Children staff in Pakistan — about 2,000 people — are Pakistani nationals and they will continue to do their work for the organization.

Ghulam Qadri, a spokesman for Save the Children, said the Ministry of Interior informed the organization earlier this week that its six foreign staffers would have to leave the country within two weeks, although they have since been able to extend the deadline. He did not specify the new date.

The ministry could not be reached for comment.

Pakistan suspicious of international ties

After the May 2011 American raid that killed bin Laden, Pakistan arrested Shakil Afridi, the doctor who allegedly helped the United States track down the al-Qaeda leader. Afridi was said to have run a fake vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and try to verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed him.

Afridi was later convicted and sentenced to 33 years for high treason. The U.S. has been pushing for his release and praised his actions but in Pakistan he is viewed with disdain by many including security officials for helping a foreign intelligence agency operate within its borders.

In the wake of Afridi's arrest, Pakistani officials have become increasingly suspicious of groups with international ties, and many aid groups have reported that it is becoming more difficult to obtain visas.

A lawyer for the doctor, Samiullah Khan, said Pakistani investigators in a report concluded that Afridi met with some foreigners in connection with the vaccination drive, including someone from Save the Children in Islamabad. Khan says his client denies the charges and that he is innocent.

Qadri said there's no evidence suggesting that it worked with Afridi and that the aid group has already given the government all the information it has asked for as part of its investigation.

Qadri said he expects that the foreign staffers will have to leave, but said they may be able to return at a future date.

The expulsion was first reported by the British newspaper the Guardian.

Save the Children is an international aid group with operations in more than 50 countries around the world that aims to improve the lives of children. The group has been working in Pakistan since 1979, according to its website. Recently it has been helping some of the roughly 250,000 people who have fled fighting in Pakistan's Khyber agency, a tribal area that borders Afghanistan.

With files from the CBC