Islamabad, Sept. 11, (dpa/GNA) – Gunmen riding a motorbike shot at a polio vaccination team in north-western Pakistan on Wednesday, killing a vaccinator and a police officer guarding the door-to-door campaign, officials said.
The incident occurred in the region of Bajaur near the Afghan border where Islamist militants from both the Pakistani Taliban and the extremist Islamic State groups are active, local police official Ajab Khan told dpa.
The attackers fled the remote area after the shooting, Khan added.
The attack occurred two days after a roadside bomb targeted a polio vaccination team in the nearby region of South Waziristan, wounding at least 11 people and destroying a police vehicle.
There was no claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack while the bombing earlier in the week was claimed by Islamic State’s local chapter, ISKP.
Islamist militants routinely target polio vaccinators and the members of the security forces who guard them in Pakistan, as they say vaccination is a ploy by the West to sterilize Muslim children.
Pakistan launched the emergency vaccination drive this week after the first polio case was reported from the capital Islamabad in 16 years amid a surge in other parts of the country.
More than 33 million children under the age of five were being targeted for vaccination in the drive that started on Monday, Pakistan’s polio vaccination chief Ayesha Raza said, as the total number of new cases this year rose to 17.
The number of polio cases in Pakistan peaked at 147 in 2019 but declined to only six last year, rekindling hopes that the virus could be eradicated from the last global hotspot along with neighbouring Afghanistan.