PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Suspected militants riding a motorcycle shot and killed two police officers assigned to protect polio workers during a door-to-door vaccination campaign in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said.
The drive-by shooting in Mohmand, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan, also left a third officer wounded. The police officers were traveling 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 sterilize 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.
Pakistan on Monday launched a nationwide campaign to vaccinate 24 million children against polio as part of efforts to eradicate the disease. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only countries where wild poliovirus is endemic, according to the World Health Organization.
