PESHAWAR: Gunmen opened fire on a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing a policeman providing security to the workers, officers said.
The shooting happened in the Kala village of Swabi district, where two women were administering polio drops to children.
The attack prompted authorities to suspend all polio vaccinations in Swabi, where seven workers of a charity also involved in immunisations were killed on January 1. “The team, after finishing the campaign in Kala, was heading towards a nearby village when three men armed with Kalashnikovs appeared from sugarcane fields and opened fire,” Swabi police chief Abdul Rashid Khan said.
A police official escorting the duo was killed but the two team members were unhurt and the gunmen escaped, he said. “It seems the target was the policeman,” Khan added.
“The polio vaccination has been temporarily suspended in Swabi after the firing incident,” senior local administration official Syeed Muhammad Shah told said. AFP
