Two policemen martyred on way to polio duty in Mohmand

Two policemen were martyred and a third was injured when unidentified gunmen opened fire on them while they were on their way to provide security to a polio team in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mohmand district on Tuesday, police said, Dawn reported.

Headquarters Deputy Superintendent of Police Liaquat Ali confirmed the details to Dawn. The attack took place near the Hashim Kor police checkpost in the Dag Tamanzai area of Pindiali tehsil. He named the dead as Constables Zahoor Khan and Arbai Khan, and the injured man as Sepoy Sabir Khan.

The abductions in Tank

Separately, KP Governor Faisal Karim Kundi took notice of reports that four polio workers had been abducted in Tank district and directed the authorities to take “immediate and effective measures” for their safe recovery. He called the incident “extremely regrettable and condemnable”, according to a statement from his office. Polio workers, he said, “perform a national duty to protect children and promote a healthy Pakistan”, the government was responsible for providing security to the teams, and targeting them was “against humanity and the national interest”.

We reported the abductions on Monday night, including the release of two other vaccinators who had been kidnapped in Azam Warsak, in our earlier story. The Tribune said police sources reported the four workers were taken to an undisclosed location after being fired upon, and that the gunmen had not been identified.

The campaign

The attacks come as a sub-national polio vaccination campaign, which began across the country on Sunday, targets nearly 24 million children in 97 high-risk districts. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio is still endemic. On Sunday, Pakistan reported its eighth polio case of the year, a 13-month-old girl from KP’s Khyber district, as we reported in our story on the case in Khyber’s Bara. Of the eight cases, six are from KP, including four in the Bannu division, and two are from Sindh.

A pattern of attacks

In July, Pakistan told the global Independent Monitoring Board that the country had entered a decisive phase in its decades-long fight against polio, with the virus pushed into a shrinking number of high-risk areas. It cautioned that persistent insecurity, especially in southern KP, remained the biggest obstacle to reaching every child.

Police who guard vaccination teams have been targeted before:

• September: two policemen were martyred when armed assailants fired at a vaccination team in Noshki, Balochistan.
• April: a police constable was martyred and four others were injured in an attack on a law enforcement party en route to provide security for polio teams in Hangu, KP.

What we know, and what we don’t

• Known: two policemen were killed and one wounded in Mohmand, per the police official quoted by Dawn.
• Known: the governor has ordered efforts to recover four abducted polio workers in Tank.
• Unknown: who carried out the Mohmand attack; no group has claimed it, and the police have not named suspects.
• Unknown: where the four Tank workers are and whether they are safe, and whether the campaign will be suspended in affected areas.

Why it matters

Each attack on a polio team or its escorts makes it harder to reach children in the districts where the virus still circulates, and the campaign is at its most intense this week. Police officers who guard vaccinators carry the highest risk, and their deaths show the cost of a programme that depends on access to areas with a poor security record. If teams cannot enter, the children in those areas stay unprotected, and the virus continues to spread.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn.