PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen have shot dead a police constable escorting a team of polio workers in northwest Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said on Wednesday. The policeman guarding the polio team was targeted by the unknown gunmen in the Jarma area of Kohat district.
The constable died as a result of firing while the assailants managed to flee from the scene, police said. No group has taken responsibility for the attack yet. The attack is the latest in a spate of such assaults on polio health workers in Pakistan.
Unidentified gunmen shot dead a police constable guarding a team of polio workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in September last year. A Pakistani policeman guarding a polio team in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was shot dead in December last year, a day after two soldiers were attacked in a similar incident killing one of them.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two remaining countries in the world where polio is endemic after Nigeria was declared free of poliovirus in 2020. The Pakistan government has suspended the anti-polio drive in the past following the growing number of attacks on polio workers in different parts of the country.
Attempts to eradicate the crippling disease have been seriously hampered by deadly targeting of vaccination teams in recent years by militants, who oppose the drives, claiming that the polio drops cause infertility.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident a police constable was killed during a raid in Urmur Miana village in Peshawar district, police said.