Policeman guarding polio team killed in Bajaur

BAJAUR: Gunmen shot dead a Pakistan police officer guarding a polio team on Wednesday in a remote area close to the Afghan border, police said.

Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio is endemic and militants have for decades targeted vaccination teams and their security escorts.

Polio has resurged in Pakistan, with two cases reported so far this year, and at least 73 polio infections last year, compared to six in 2023.

“Two motorcycle riders opened fire… as a result, the police officer died on the spot, but the polio team remained unharmed,” Niaz Muhammad, a police officer in Bajaur district, told AFP.

Bajaur district in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province shares a 52-kilometre (32-mile) border with Afghanistan.

The start of the polio campaign had been delayed in the district for security reasons, after a rise in militant attacks in the area, said Waqas Rafiq, a senior police official.

“Despite the attack, the campaign continues in all areas (of the district) except the site of the incident,” he said.

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Polio mostly affects children under five and sometimes causes lifelong paralysis but can easily be prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of vaccine.

Over the past decade, hundreds of police officers and health workers have been killed by militants waging an offensive against the Pakistani state.

In the past, firebrand clerics falsely claimed the vaccine contained pork or alcohol, forbidding it for consumption by Muslims.

A fake vaccination campaign organised by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Pakistan in 2011 to track Osama bin Laden compounded the mistrust.

Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic uptick in attacks in its remote border regions since the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021, with Islamabad claiming hostile groups plan their attacks from Afghan soil.

The Taliban government denies the claim.

It comes as the Champions Trophy cricket tournament kicked off in Pakistan on Wednesday, with the hosts and seven international teams visiting Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore under improved security.