By Staff Reporter
BAJAUR: Gunmen killed two police constables assigned to protect polio vaccination teams in Pakistan’s northwest on Monday, the opening day of a national immunization campaign aimed at stamping out the country’s persistent polio cases, officials said.
The attacks took place in Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a former tribal area long plagued by militancy. In the first assault, Constable Sayed Aziz, 35, was returning home from duty in the Dag Qala area of Salarzai tehsil when unidentified assailants opened fire with rifles, police officials said. He sustained multiple bullet wounds and died on the way to the hospital.
About two hours later, in the nearby Tabai area of the same tehsil, Constable Sayed Qadar Shah, 45, who had been escorting a polio team, was ambushed by attackers using automatic rifles as he headed home after his shift. He was critically wounded and taken to the district headquarters hospital in Khar, where he succumbed to his injuries, authorities said.
Bajaur police spokesperson Israr Khan confirmed the details of both incidents. Salarzai Deputy Superintendent of Police Jamal Shah said officers from the local station rushed to the first scene and launched an immediate search for the attackers, who fled. An investigation is underway to identify those responsible. No group has claimed responsibility for either killing.
A senior security official in Peshawar told the Agence France-Presse news agency that motorcycle-riding militants carried out the two separate attacks on officers protecting vaccination teams in Bajaur. The same official said terrorists also gunned down two more policemen performing routine duties on Monday in the Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The killings occurred as Pakistan began a week-long polio vaccination campaign across 79 high-risk districts, with plans to administer oral drops to more than 19 million children. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the drive was scheduled to run for four days. Polio remains endemic in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, the only two countries where the paralyzing virus continues to circulate. The highly infectious disease mainly strikes children under 5 and can cause lifelong paralysis, though it is easily prevented by the vaccine.
Militants have repeatedly targeted polio workers and their police escorts over the past decade, killing hundreds of officers and health personnel as part of a broader campaign against the Pakistani state. Many attacks stem from a persistent conspiracy theory in rural areas that the vaccine is a Western plot — sometimes described as a CIA scheme — to sterilize Muslim children and curb population growth.
Local police responded to Monday’s shootings by tightening security for vaccination teams across Bajaur, particularly in Salarzai tehsil. “The murder of the two policemen by unidentified armed assailants in the same Salarzai tehsil while they were escorting polio teams has also prompted the local police to further tighten security for vaccination teams across the district, particularly in the affected region,” a senior police official said.
The bodies of the two slain constables were taken to the Police Lines ground in Khar, where funeral prayers were offered simultaneously. District administration officials, police personnel and local elders attended. The remains were later transported to the officers’ native towns for burial.
The violence fits a grim pattern. In December, assailants attacked a polio team in Bajaur, killing two people, including a constable. In February, gunmen in Chaman, Balochistan, killed a police officer guarding a vaccination drive — the first such attack of the year at the time. Last month, a constable was killed and four others wounded when gunmen struck a security party en route to protect polio teams in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pakistan has made significant progress against polio in recent years through repeated national campaigns, but pockets of resistance remain in the northwest and parts of Balochistan, where weak infrastructure, misinformation and militant activity have slowed eradication efforts. Health officials have described the current drive as critical to preventing any resurgence of the virus.
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