Gunmen kill constable escorting polio team in northwest Pakistan
Unidentified gunmen on Sunday shot dead a police constable escorting a team of polio workers in northwest Pakistans restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the third such incident within a week. The constable, identified as Ikramullah, was killed by the gunmen riding a motorcycle in Dera Ismail Khan district of the province, police said.
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Unidentified gunmen on Sunday shot dead a police constable escorting a team of polio workers in northwest Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the third such incident within a week. The constable, identified as Ikramullah, was killed by the gunmen riding a motorcycle in Dera Ismail Khan district of the province, police said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Police have cordoned off the area and launched an operation to nab the culprits. Ikramullah is the third policeman to be killed in north-west Pakistan in a week. On Thursday, gunmen killed a traffic constable, who was returning to his native village after completing polio duty in Chagharmatti area in Peshawar district. Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its neighbour Afghanistan.
The Pakistan government has suspended the anti-polio drive and post-campaign evaluation in the past following the increasing number of attacks on polio workers in different parts of the country. Attempts to eradicate the crippling disease have been seriously hampered by deadly targeting of vaccination teams in recent years by militants, who oppose the drives, claiming that the polio drops cause infertility.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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