Suspected militants kill police officer assigned to guard polio team as nationwide campaign begins

ISLAMABAD– Suspected militants opened fire on a vehicle carrying police officers assigned to protect polio workers in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing one and wounding four others before fleeing the scene, police said. Two attackers were killed when police returned fire.

The shooting occurred in Hangu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, shortly after Pakistan launched its second national polio campaign of the year, according to local police official Mahmood Alam.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion will likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban and local militant groups, which often carry out similar attacks in the region and elsewhere. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only countries where polio has not been eradicated, according to the World Health Organization.

First Lady Aseefa Bhutto Zardari urged families to ensure their children are vaccinated during the week-long campaign, which aims to reach more than 45 million children under the age of 5 across all provinces and regions. She said the campaign will be carried out in coordination with Afghanistan, reflecting a shared commitment to interrupting cross-border transmission and closing remaining gaps.

Aseefa is the daughter of President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and bomb attack by militants in 2007, and who had personally overseen initiatives to eliminate polio during her tenure. In a statement, she said “Pakistan finds itself at a crucial juncture in the fight against polio.” She said that although the country is closer than ever to eradication, “the final stretch remains the hardest.”

Highlighting recent progress, she said 31 cases of polio have been reported across the country in 2025, while only one case has been recorded so far this year, but warned against complacency.

While Pakistan primarily uses door-to-door vaccination teams to reach children at their homes, Afghanistan generally relies on fixed vaccination sites and health facilities, where parents are invited to bring their children to be vaccinated.

In Kabul, Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Health, said the first national polio vaccination campaign of the year had started in Afghanistan in coordination with international partners, aiming to vaccinate around 12.6 million children under the age of 5 across the country. He said the campaign had been delayed in some areas due to cold weather.

Zaman urged parents, religious scholars and community leaders to ensure maximum participation in the campaign, emphasizing that polio can only be prevented through vaccination.

Pakistan’s polio eradication program has been running anti-polio campaigns for years, even though the health workers and police charged with protecting them are often targets of activists who falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.

Authorities deployed thousands of police to protect workers following intelligence warnings of possible attacks. More than 200 polio workers and the police charged with monitoring them have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s, authorities say.

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Afghan reported from Kabul. Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar contributed to this story from Peshawar, Pakistan.