Gunmen kill two Pakistani policemen guarding polio vaccinators

Two men riding a motorcycle opened fire at officers guarding a two-woman vaccination team working in the Nawa Killi area of ​​Balochistan’s provincial capital, Quetta, police said.

The policemen “died on the spot” while both women remained safely inside a house where children were being vaccinated, senior police officer Adeel Akbar told AFP.

Local police officer Masood Kasi confirmed the incident, saying the officers were members of Pakistan’s marginalized Shiite Hazara community.

“We are investigating the incident both of the attack on the polio team and of any possible sectarian elements involved,” Kasi said.

“We have further increased the safety of polio kits and the vaccination campaign is still ongoing,” he added.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes just two days after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 54 people at a political gathering in northwest Pakistan.

The Pakistani Taliban, a separate group that shares common ancestry with the Afghan Taliban, have claimed previous killings of polio security escorts.

Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, Pakistan has seen an increase in militant attacks focused on regions along the Afghan border.

Pakistan has reported only one case of polio this year, but 20 were reported last year, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Efforts to end the disease have also been hampered by conspiracy theories spread by the radical religious right, which claim that vaccination programs are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.

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