Two police officers guarding a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan were shot dead by unidentified assailants, police said on Tuesday (August 16th).
Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world, along with Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic.
In both countries, vaccination teams have been targeted for years by Islamic militants.
“
Two gunmen who were hiding near a small canal opened fire on the police at very close range
,” senior officer Waqar Ahmad Khan told AFP.
The assailants "
spared the two members of the polio vaccination team (...) and fled on a motorbike
", he added.
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The incident took place in Kot Azam, Tank district, near tribal districts where the military has clashed with armed groups since 2003. Dozens of polio vaccinators and those tasked with their security were killed since 2012 in Pakistan, a country where some Islamists say vaccines are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.
According to another conspiracy theory, vaccines contain pork fat and are therefore banned by Muslims.
This mistrust, fueled by ultra-conservative clerics, grew after the organization of a false vaccination campaign by the CIA to find the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, killed in 2011 in Abbottabad (north ).
Pakistan launched a new polio vaccination campaign in late June, during which it plans to administer the vaccine to 12.6 million children.
In April, the country detected its first case in 15 months of this highly contagious disease, caused by a virus that invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis.
Since then, 14 new cases have been identified.
The United States recorded its first case of polio in nearly a decade in July, while Britain will offer a booster polio vaccine to children between one and nine years old living in London, after the detection of the virus in the sewage of the British capital.
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