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north-west Pakistan yesterday, police said, the latest in a series of deadly attacks on vaccination teams.
Two attackers on a motorcycle opened fire on the team on the edge of the city of Peshawar, near the restive Khyber tribal region where the military has been battling homegrown insurgents with links to the Taliban.
“One female worker was killed and another wounded in the attack on the first day of a three-day campaign meant for areas on the outskirts of Peshawar,” a local police official, Shafi Ullah, told AFP. An official in the city’s Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the death.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) condemned the attack and said it would consult local authorities about whether to continue the campaign.
“We are working closely with the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and are looking at the situation evolving after the attack on the polio team in Peshawar,” the WHO said in a statement.
President Asif Ali Zardari also condemned the attack, saying “such cowardly acts of the militants and extremists cannot deter the strong resolve of the government to eradicate polio”.
No one has claimed responsibility for the killing, but last year the Pakistani Taliban banned polio vaccinations in the tribal region of Waziristan, alleging the campaign was a cover for espionage.
Late last year polio teams came under attack in Karachi and in the north-west, with the killing of nine health workers carrying out vaccinations.
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only countries where polio is endemic. Polio cases in Pakistan hit 198 in 2011, the highest figure for more than a decade and the most of any country in the world, according to the UN.
UN officials say there are about 161 000 children in North Waziristan district alone who have not received a polio vaccine since June last year. — AFP.
Online Reporter