(Representative image): The officers had been deployed to protect the vaccination team, which was carrying out the weeklong immunisation campaign launched by the government on Monday.
Police officers killed during vaccination drive
The officials said that the attack took place as health teams carried out a door-to-door campaign targeting more than 31 million children.
The health workers escaped unharmed, local police official Munawar Zaman said. Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only countries where transmission of wild poliovirus has not been interrupted, according to the World Health Organisation. The gunmen opened fire when Nushki district, polio workers were administering oral vaccine drops to children inside a home. Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attack in a statement.
Gunmen shot dead two police officers protecting polio vaccination workers in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Tuesday. The officers had been deployed to protect the vaccination team, which was carrying out the weeklong immunisation campaign launched by the government on Monday.