Suspected militants kill police officer guarding polio team in Pakistan; attack comes as vaccination drive launches

Suspected militants opened fire on a police officer guarding a team of polio workers in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing the officer and a passerby before fleeing, police said. No polio workers were harmed in the attack, which occurred in Bajaur, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.

Local police chief Samad Khan said the shooting happened as a police guard protected vaccinators conducting a house-to-house immunization operation. While no group immediately claimed responsibility, investigators expect the Pakistani Taliban or allied militant groups to be suspects given a string of similar attacks in the region and across Pakistan. The shooting came a day after Pakistan launched a weeklong nationwide vaccination campaign aimed at immunizing 45 million children.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack and vowed strong action against those responsible. Officials with Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Initiative said the country has reported 30 polio cases since January, down from 74 during the same period last year. Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on workers and the police assigned to protect them. Militants have falsely claimed that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. More than 200 polio workers and police protecting them have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s, according to health and security officials.

The attack underscores the precarious security environment surrounding polio campaigns in Pakistan, where vaccination drives continue amid threats from militant groups. Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries where polio has not been eradicated, according to the World Health Organization, highlighting the ongoing public health challenge despite repeated immunization efforts.