Islamabad, Oct. 29 (EFE).- A police officer was killed and another injured in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a polio vaccination team they were guarding, police said.
The polio vaccination team was on its way for a vaccination drive in Dabori area of Orakzai district, the police of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Orakzai is located, said in a statement.
“One police personnel was martyred while another was injured due to the firing,” the police said, adding “a heavy contingent of police and Frontier Corps personnel have arrived in the area.”
Rafi Ullah, a police official at the Orakzai police headquarters told EFE, that two militants were also killed in the exchange of fire between the gunmen and the police.
A search operation is underway to locate the gunmen who attacked the polio vaccination team.
On Monday, Pakistan launched a week-long nationwide campaign to inoculate over 45 million children after a sharp surge in polio cases this year.
The country has reported 41 polio cases this year compared to only six in 2023.
More than 400,000 front line workers are going door-to-door to ister polio drops to all children under five years of age.
All children aged between 6 and 59 months are also receiving vitamin A supplementation, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Program said in a statement on Monday.
The police said on Monday that strict security arrangements had been put in place as the campaign kicked off in the tribal district.
“Blockades have been established on internal and external ages,” the statement added.
Militants, mainly from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or the Pakistani Taliban, have frequently targeted polio vaccination teams in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in the past.
The militant groups accuse polio vaccination teams of using immunization campaigns to sterilize children as part of a Western conspiracy.
The attacks increased after the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up a fake vaccination program to hunt down former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who was killed by US Special Forces in Pakistan’s Abbottabad city in 2011.
In September, two people were killed when gunmen attacked a polio vaccination team in Bajaur tribal district.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic. EFE
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