Islamabad, Jan 8 (EFE).- At least five policemen died and 22 others were wounded when a truck transporting them was hit by a bomb early Monday in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said.
“A truck carrying police officials was hit by a bomb at 8.50 in the morning” in Mamond area, Aziz Khan, a police official at the Bajaur district – where the incident occurred – told EFE.
The police official said that it was a targeted attack on the police truck which was transporting the personnel to a local health center, from where they were to be sent to escort polio eradication teams.
“As a result, five policemen have been martyred (killed) and 15 others have been injured,” said the official, adding that the nature of the blast was being ascertained by the Bomb Disposal Team who had reached the spot.
“It is early to say what kind of blast it was as the investigation has begun which will determine it,” he added.
On Monday, the government kicked off a nationwide anti-polio drive of varied duration across Pakistan to inoculate more than 44.3 million children, health authorities said.
According to Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Program, polio workers will go door to door to ister polio vaccines to children of up to five years of age.
During the campaign, additional doses of vitamin A will also be given to children to increase their immunity.
Polio teams constituted by federal and provincial health departments are expected to cover all 159 districts of the country, the state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster reported.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by poliovirus, mainly affecting children under the age of ten years. It invades the nervous system, and can cause paralysis or even death.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio continues to threaten the health and well-being of children.
However, since the launch of the Polio Eradication Program in 1994, there has been a massive decline in polio cases in the south Asian nation from approximately 20,000 every year in the early 1990s to only six cases in 2023. EFE
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