Four-year-old Abducted albino is feared to have been killed so her body parts can be used in witch doctor's potions in Tanzania

Police in Tanzania have arrested the father of a four-year-old albino girl who is feared to have been abducted and murdered so her body parts can be sold to make witch doctors' potions.

Pendo Emmanuelle Nundi was snatched from her home in the Mwanza region in the north of the country on Saturday by attackers armed with machetes.

The body parts of albino people are said to fetch up to £50,000 in parts of deeply superstitious Tanzania where they are used to make potions and sold as lucky charms.

At least 74 albinos have been murdered in the east African country since 2000, according to United Nations experts. 

Regional police chief Valentino Mlowola told state television: 'We have arrested four people, including the girl's father.

'We are still in the process of interrogating them so we can find out where the girl is -- if she is still alive,' the official said, adding the attackers may have been tipped off by neighbours.

After a spike in killings in 2009, the government placed youngsters in children's homes in a desperate effort to defend them.

While Islam and Christianity are the main religions in Tanzania a 2010 survey found that 93 per cent of people still believe in witchcraft.

In May last year two witch doctors were arrested after an albino woman was found hacked to death with her fingers and one leg removed in the Simiyu province also in the northern part of the country.

And in August three men armed with machetes hacked off the arm of a 15-year-old albino girl in Tabora in the west of the country. 

 A hereditary genetic condition which causes a total absence of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes, albinism affects one Tanzanian in 1,400, often as a result of inbreeding in remote and rural communities, experts say. 

In the West, it affects just one person in 20,000.

In August a UN rights expert warned that attacks against albinos were on the rise because Tanzania's October 2015 presidential election was on the horizon, encouraging political campaigners to turn to influential sorcerers for support. 

- Dailymail