Militants kill police officer, injure another guarding polio teams in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

A militant shot dead a police officer and injured another in two separate incidents while they were guarding polio vaccinators in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday, police said.

The attacks occurred a day after health workers launched a nationwide campaign against the resurgent disease.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic and the vaccination teams frequently come under attack by militants targeting security forces.

"The attack resulted in the death of the police officer at the scene, while one polio worker was injured," a senior police official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

The police officer was travelling with two vaccinators when they were attacked by motorcyclists in Karak, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The polio campaign has been temporarily suspended in Shakar Khel, the village where the incident took place, but continues in other parts of the northwest province bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistan has experienced a surge in polio cases, reporting 63 infections this year compared to just six in 2023.

In Bannu, a polio worker, identified as Hayatullah Khan, was injured in a similar attack and transported to a hospital for treatment. The assailants fled the scene, and police have launched an investigation.

On Monday, the Pakistan government launched a four-day campaign that will cover 143 districts across the country, with over 400,000 polio workers going door-to-door aiming to immunize more than 45 million children over the age of five.

"I appeal to all parents across Pakistan to fully cooperate with the campaign, vaccinate their children against polio to protect them from this disease permanently," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said during the campaign launch, a day before the attack.

Polio can easily be prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of vaccine, but in parts of rural Pakistan health workers risk their lives to save others.

Scores of polio vaccination workers and their escorts have been killed over the years.

In September, dozens of Pakistani policemen who accompany medical teams on door-to-door campaigns went on strike after a string of militant attacks.