QUETTA: Gunmen on Wednesday killed a policeman guarding a polio vaccination team in Pakistan’s southwest, police said, the latest blow to efforts to wipe out the crippling virus.
The two attackers on a motorbike shot the policeman in the Pashtunabad area on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan province, before fleeing, senior local police official Aitzaz Goraya said.
He said the policeman, who was guarding a four-member polio vaccination team, was shot as he came out of a mosque after saying prayers during the lunch break.
“The policeman succumbed to his wounds on his way to hospital,” he said.
The vaccination drive remained unaffected by the shooting, he added.
The city police chief Shafqat Cheema confirmed the incident and casualty.
Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic. Attempts to eradicate it have been badly hit by opposition from militants and attacks on immunization teams that have claimed 69 lives since December 2012.
The militants claim that the polio vaccination drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilize Muslims.
Apart from attacks on vaccination teams, Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province, has been racked for decades by a separatist insurgency that was revived in 2004.
Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen shot dead five customs officials patrolling overnight in Pakistan’s restive northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province, authorities said on Wednesday.
The gunmen attacked the duty officers at around midnight in Kohat city, some 80 kilometers (49 miles) southwest of Peshawar, capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Three gunmen fired at the customs team indiscriminately. Four officials died on the spot and another succumbed to his injuries in hospital later,” Sohaib Ashraf, district police chief in Kohat, told AFP.
“We are unaware of the identity of the attackers but it’s an act of terrorism,” he said.
Another police official in the area, Iqbal Mohmand said the attackers escaped on foot under cover of darkness.
A customs department official also confirmed the incident.
“It was a terrorist attack on our team. All five members of the team were killed in this attack. They hailed from local areas of Kohat and Karak districts,” he said.
Uniformed government officials, including polio vaccination workers, are often targeted by militants who want to overthrow the government.
Customs officials, meanwhile, sometimes come under attack by criminal gangs.
Policeman guarding polio team shot dead in Pakistan
Policeman guarding polio team shot dead in Pakistan
EU proposes suspending a duty-free sugar import scheme
- The IPR scheme allows companies to import sugar at zero duty and without limits
- White sugar imports under the IPR totalled 155,000 tons in 2024/25, up 5 percent year-on-year
PARIS: The European Commission proposed suspending a scheme allowing some duty-free sugar imports into the bloc, aiming to ease pressure on European producers facing falling prices and increased competition.
“I will propose a temporary suspension of the sugar inward processing regime to ease pressures on sugar producers,” European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen said on X late on Monday.
The IPR scheme allows companies to import sugar at zero duty and without limits, provided the sugar is refined or processed into food products and then re-exported outside the European Union.
Raw sugar imported into the EU under the IPR in the 2024/25 marketing year totalled 587,000 metric tons, up 19 percent on the previous year, of which 95 percent came from Brazil, European Commission data showed.
White sugar imports under the IPR totalled 155,000 tons in 2024/25, up 5 percent year-on-year, of which 43 percent came from Brazil, followed by Morocco, Egypt and Ukraine, the data showed.
European sugar beet producers have raised concerns about unfair competition and the potential impact of a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries which includes a larger sugar quota.
Producers say imports have contributed to a supply glut that led EU sugar prices to slump to their lowest in at least three years.
The European sugar beet growers lobby CIBE expressed strong support for the decision, calling it timely and necessary.
“It will provide the right signal and some relief on a very depressed EU sugar market,” the group said on X.
