A police officer deployed with a health worker administering polio vaccinations was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in Balochistan, Abid Hussain reports for Al Jazeera.


The police officer, Muhammed Hashim, was shot on Tuesday morning as he waited outside a home in Pishin city where a worker had gone inside to administer immunisation drops as part of a vaccination programme that had started on Monday.

The law enforcement official, not the health care provider, was the target of the attack, Yasir Bazai, Pishin’s deputy commissioner, has said.

RELATED STORIES

“We are not going to suspend the campaign and it will continue as scheduled. However, security has been beefed up around polio teams in the rest of the province,” he told Al Jazeera.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio has not yet been eradicated. To formally eradicate the disease, a nation must be polio-free for three consecutive years. Nigeria was declared free from wild polio in August 2020.