Gunmen on Sunday killed security personnel guarding polio vaccinators in northwest Pakistan, an official confirmed.
The incident – the latest in a series of similar attacks in recent years – occurred in the remote Tank district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders the erstwhile semi-autonomous tribal district of South Waziristan, a former stronghold of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a conglomerate of several militant groups in the country.
Deputy Commissioner Tank Kabir Afridi told reporters that motorbike gunmen ambushed paramilitary troops guarding an immunization team in a nearby village, killing one personnel.
On Saturday, a policeman was killed and another injured in an ambush in the same district.
The TTP has claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, but not yet for the ambush on Sunday.
These attacks came three days after the militant group announced that a month-long cease-fire agreement with the government had come to an end.
The group and its affiliates have been involved in attacks on polio vaccinators across the country. According to Pakistani officials, around 100 people associated with the drive have been killed across Pakistan since 2012.
The government has ramped up anti-polio immunization efforts across the country in order to build on its significant progress in eliminating the crippling disease.
This year, the South Asian country has not reported a single polio case.
Pakistan, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, is one of three nations in the world where the poliovirus still exists, and the country remains under a polio-linked travel restriction imposed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
In 2014, the WHO made it mandatory for all people traveling from Pakistan to have a polio vaccination certificate, although the ban is not effectively enforced.
Armed assailants who target vaccinators and their security guards believe anti-polio campaigns are part of a larger anti-Muslim conspiracy linked to birth control, and they frequently threaten vaccinators, many of whom are women, with death.
