2 Pak policemen killed after gunmen attack polio vaccination team in restive Balochistan

Karachi, August 1

Two Pakistani policemen escorting a polio vaccination team were killed on Tuesday in the country’s restive Balochistan province when unknown assailants opened fire at them.

The attack occurred in Quetta’s Nawa Killi area on the first day of a week-long campaign to vaccinate approximately 2.6 million infants under five years old in the province.

The members of the polio vaccination team escaped unharmed, but the two policemen there to provide security to the team were killed when unknown gunmen opened indiscriminate fire.

“The polio vaccination team were unhurt, but the armed men came on motorcycles and opened fire when the team was knocking at the door of a house in the neighbourhood,” the Station House Officer, Asif Marwat, said, confirming the incident.

He added that the polio campaign in Nawa Killi and its surrounding areas had been suspended.

Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo and Foreign Minister Bilawal Zardari condemned the incident, asserting that terrorists and extremists would not be able to stop a campaign seeking to safeguard the health of children in Pakistan.

“The negative propaganda against the polio campaign and the malicious intentions of the anti-state elements will be thwarted,” Bizenjo said, calling the perpetrators to be brought under the law.

In the past, the polio vaccine campaign has been hit by such terrorist attacks in many parts of the country, notably in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Even in Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, polio vaccine workers and the policemen escorting them have come under fire.

Many religious leaders and Islamist terror groups have accused the polio vaccine teams of working under a Western agenda and claim polio drops make children infertile.