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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen on bikes opened hearth on Pakistani police escorting a staff of polio staff Tuesday throughout a door-to-door inoculation marketing campaign in a former Pakistani Taliban stronghold, killing two policemen and a polio employee, police mentioned.
Nobody instantly claimed duty for the assault in North Waziristan, a district within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The assault got here a day after the federal government launched one other nationwide anti-polio marketing campaign amid a spike in assaults.
A passerby was additionally wounded, mentioned Aziz Ullah, a neighborhood police official. The attackers fled the scene.
Since April, Pakistan has registered 11 new polio circumstances — all in North Waziristan, the place mother and father usually refuse to inoculate youngsters. The outbreak has been a blow to the Islamic nation’s efforts to eradicate the illness, which may trigger extreme paralysis in youngsters.
Pakistan’s anti-polio campaigns are commonly marked by violence. Islamic militants usually goal polio groups and police assigned to guard them, falsely claiming the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize youngsters.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the one international locations on this planet the place polio stays endemic. In 2021, Pakistan reported just one case, elevating hopes it was near eradicating polio.
North Waziristan was a base for myriad militant teams, together with the Pakistani Taliban, till an enormous army offensive lately claimed to have cleared the area, forcing many militants to flee to Afghanistan. However assaults have been rising recently, including to issues the assaults might additional jeopardize anti-polio campaigns.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the assault and ordered an investigation.
The U.N. youngsters’s company took to Twitter to sentence the assault, saying “@UNICEF joins @GovtofPakistan in condemning the assault which reportedly killed a polio employee & safety personnel & injured a baby in North Waziristan. These killed have been amongst a whole bunch of hundreds of heroes who work selflessly to #EndPolio. We categorical our sympathy to households”.
Earlier, UNICEF posted an attraction on Twitter, urging mother and father to inoculate their youngsters. The aim of the most recent marketing campaign was to vaccinate 12.6 million youngsters underneath the age of 5 throughout Pakistan.
“Collectively, we are able to #EndPolio! Please ensure that each baby is immunized in opposition to this lethal virus,” UNICEF mentioned.
Shahzad Baig, a coordinator for Pakistan’s polio program, additionally urged “all mother and father and caregivers to get their youngsters vaccinated as a substitute of hiding them or refusing to (allow them to) take the required drops.”
“You will need to notice that the polio virus nonetheless exists in our environment and no baby is secure till all youngsters are really vaccinated,” Baig added.
Shuja Khan, a Pakistani father whose son was affected by polio in North Waziristan, posted a video message on Twitter. Holding his boy in his lap, he appealed on mother and father to inoculate their youngsters and keep away from his household’s ordeal.
Till this week, Pakistan’s well being authorities had carried out three nationwide anti-polio drives this yr — in January, March and in Might. Throughout the March marketing campaign, gunmen in northwestern Pakistan shot and killed a feminine polio employee as she was returning dwelling after a day of vaccinations.
And in January, gunmen shot and killed a police officer offering safety for polio vaccination staff, additionally within the nation’s northwest.
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Related Press author Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this story.
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