- Two motorcyclists opened fire, killing a police officer on site.
- The Polio campaign in Bajaur started late for security reasons.
- The campaign continues all areas with the exception of the incident site: the police.
Peshawar: Armed men killed a police officer by keeping a polio vaccination team on Wednesday in the Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near the Afghan border, police said.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio is endemic and activists have targeted targeted vaccination teams and their safety escorts.
Polio resurfaced in Pakistan, with two cases reported so far this year, and at least 74 polio infections last year, against six in 2023.
“Two motorcyclists opened fire … Consequently, the police officer died instantly, but the polio team remained unscathed,” said Niaz Muhammad, a policeman from the Bajaur district, said AFP.
The Bajaur district shares a 52 -kilometer border with Afghanistan.
The start of the polio campaign had been delayed in the district for security reasons, after an increase in militant attacks in the region, Waqas Rafiq said a senior police official.
“Despite the attack, the campaign continues in all areas (of the district), except for the incident site,” he said.
Polio mainly affects children under the age of five and sometimes causes life paralysis, but can easily be avoided by the oral administration of a few drops of vaccine.
Over the past decade, hundreds of police officers and health workers have been killed by activists putting an offensive against the Pakistani state.
Pakistan witnessed a spectacular increase in attacks, mainly in KP and Balutchistan, since the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan in 2021, Islamabad claiming that hostile groups planned their Afghan soil attacks.