Policeman guarding polio vaccination team killed in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Gunmen on February 4, killed a policeman guarding a polio vaccination team in Pakistan’s southwest, police said, the latest blow to efforts to wipe out the crippling virus.

The two attackers on a motorbike shot the policeman in the Pashtunabad area on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan province, before fleeing, senior local police official Aitzaz Goraya told Agence France-Presse.

He said the policeman, who was guarding a four-member polio vaccination team, was shot as he came out of a mosque after saying prayers during the lunch break.

“The policeman succumbed to his wounds on his way to hospital,” he said.

The vaccination drive remained unaffected by the shooting, he added.

The city police chief Shafqat Cheema confirmed the incident and casualty.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic. Attempts to eradicate it have been badly hit by opposition from militants and attacks on immunisation teams that have claimed 69 lives since December 2012.

The militants claim that the polio vaccination drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.

Apart from attacks on vaccination teams, Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province, has been racked for decades by a separatist insurgency that was revived in 2004. – Rappler.com