2 Pakistani police officers guarding polio workers killed by suspected militants

Suspected militants riding a motorcycle shot and killed two police officers assigned to protect polio workers during a door-to-door vaccination campaign on Tuesday in northwestern Pakistan, officials said.

The drive-by shooting in Mohmand, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan, also wounded a third officer. The police officers were travelling to a nearby village to guard vaccination teams when they came under fire, police officer Ayaz Khan said.

The attackers fled the scene. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups regularly target anti-polio drives and police protecting health workers, falsely claiming that polio vaccination campaigns are part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children.

In Islamabad, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said the attack was “intolerable” and offered his condolences to the families of the killed officers, who he said worked for a healthier future for the country.

Separately, suspected militants the previous day abducted four polio workers in Tank, another district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to a statement from provincial Governor Faisal Karim Kundi. He condemned the abductions and urged authorities to take immediate steps to secure the workers’ safe release as soon as possible.

Pakistan began a nationwide campaign on Monday to vaccinate 24 million children against polio as part of efforts to eradicate the disease. Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only countries where wild poliovirus is endemic, according to the World Health Organization.