PESHAWAR: Gunmen killed two policemen guarding polio vaccination workers in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, police said.
The incident took place in Rustam, Mardan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Policemen Shakir and Syed Ali Raza were on their way back after discharging duty with the polio team when they came under attack by gunmen,” Mardan Police spokesman Kausar Khan told Arab News.
District Health Officer (DHO) Dr. Kachkul Khan said one of officers was killed on the spot while the other died on the way to hospital.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came two days after Pakistan launched a nationwide drive to eradicate the disease by the end of the year.
According to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Emergency Operation Centre (EOC), around 40,000 police personnel have been deployed to protect over 30,000 polio workers involved in the vaccination campaign in the province. At least 2,000 policemen have been deployed to protect the teams in Mardan alone.
Militants often target polio teams and police assigned to protect them. The Pakistani Taliban claim the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two remaining countries in the world where polio is endemic, after Nigeria was last year declared free of the wild polio virus.
