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Militants Kill 2 Guarding Polio Workers11/03 06:38
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 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 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.
Separately, suspected militants the previous day abducted four polio workers
in Tank, another district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to a statement from
provincial Gov. 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 Monday 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.
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