Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead two police officers and wounded a third in Pakistan’s Mohmand district on Tuesday, as the officers travelled to guard polio vaccination teams during anationwide immunisation drive.
The attack struck at the heart of Pakistan’s effort to eradicate polio, a disease that remains endemic in only Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, and it came on the second day of a campaign aiming to vaccinate nearly 24 million children.
Police said the shooting took place in the Dag Tamanzai area of Pindiali tehsil, where the officers were heading to join a polio team for security duty. A search operation was launched in the area after the attack, police said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting, officials said. District Police Officer Raza Muhammad Khan said one attacker was also injured, according to local reports.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the shooting, calling it intolerable and offering condolences to the families of the officers, who he said had worked for a healthier future for the country.
President Asif Ali Zardari also condemned the attack and paid tribute to the slain officers, according to official statements reported in Pakistani media.
Separately, four polio workers were abducted by unidentified armed men in Tank district on Monday, according to a statement from provincial Governor Faisal Karim Kundi’s office. Kundi directed authorities to take immediate and effective measures for their safe recovery.
Two other members of a vaccination team kidnapped in Lower South Waziristan were later released, The Express Tribune reported.
Pakistan began the sub-national campaign on November 2 across 97 selected districts, and it is scheduled to run until November 8, according to the National Emergency Operations Centre. The centre said more than 6.68 million children were vaccinated on the first day.
Polio teams and their police escorts have faced repeated attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where militants have targeted immunisation drives amid misinformation about vaccines, officials and analysts have said.
What is confirmed so far is that two officers are dead, a third is wounded, and the attackers remain at large, with a search operation under way. What is not confirmed is who carried out the attack, and no group had claimed responsibility in the accounts published on Tuesday.
