GUNMEN KILL TWO POLICE OFFICERS GUARDING PAKISTAN POLIO TEAMS

Gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead two police officers guarding polio vaccination teams in Mohmand district, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on Tuesday. A third officer was wounded as the attackers opened fire on the vehicle travelling to protect vaccination teams in a nearby village. Police official Ali Rehman Khan said no vaccination staff were in the vehicle at the time. "Two police personnel were martyred and another was injured in the attack," Khan said. The attackers fled the scene, and no group claimed responsibility.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, and other armed groups regularly target anti-polio drives and the police protecting health workers, falsely claiming the campaigns are part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children. It came a day after four officers guarding polio teams were abducted elsewhere in the province; they remain missing, with a search ongoing. It coincided with a nationwide drive to vaccinate nearly 24 million children across 97 high-risk districts; accounts differ on whether the drive began on Sunday or Monday. Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only countries where wild poliovirus is endemic, according to the World Health Organisation.

Pakistan's Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, called the attack "intolerable" and offered condolences to the officers' families, saying they had worked for a healthier future for the country. President Asif Ali Zardari described the shooting as "extremely regrettable and condemnable" in a social media post. "Police personnel deployed to protect polio teams are performing a national duty; their sacrifices will not be forgotten," he said. Pakistan recorded 31 polio cases last year, and registered its eighth case of this year in a 13-month-old girl from Khyber district as the drive began.