Another security officer guarding polio team gunned down in KP

• Police say security personnel killed on the spot.
• The polio team remained safe, says police official.
• Anti-polio campaign to run through October 19.
  

PESHAWAR: Another security person, guarding polio vaccination workers, was killed in the Nowshera district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Wednesday, police said.

Pakistan is one of two countries, along with Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic. Hundreds of security personnel and health workers were killed by miscreants over the past decade.

The policeman was killed in Nowshera on the third day of a nationwide anti-polio campaign targeting 45 million children across the country.

"Two armed men targeted a police officer assigned to protect a polio team," police official Bilal Khan told AFP. "He was killed on the spot," Khan added.

The polio team remained safe, according to the police.

Pakistan recorded a surge in polio cases last year, with 74 infections reported, compared to just six in 2023. So far this year, 29 polio cases have been recorded, with KP accounting for 18 cases, the highest in the country.

Sindh reported nine cases, while one each was reported in Punjab and Gilgit Baltistan.

Polio, a highly infectious virus mainly affecting children under five, can result in lifelong paralysis but is easily prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of a vaccine.

Polio teams have regularly been targeted by unknown assailants in rural areas amid a raft of misinformation circulating about the vaccine.

A day earlier, a Levies personnel — deployed for the protection of the polio team — was killed in the remote area of Anzar Tangay Byakan in Tehsil Matta of KP.

The Swat district police officer (DPO) had said that the incident occurred as vaccination workers were performing their duties under the national immunisation campaign, which began on October 13.

The week-long nationwide immunisation campaign aims to vaccinate children under the age of five across 159 districts.

While the campaign will run through October 19 nationwide, polio workers will conduct the drive from October 20 to 23 in southern KP.