Gunmen kill 2 security officials assigned to protect polio workers in southwest Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan — Gunmen riding on a motorcycle shot and killed two security officials assigned to protect polio workers in restive southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday before fleeing the scene, police said.

The attack occurred in a residential area of Mastung, a district in Balochistan, according to Mohammad Arif, a local police official. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The health workers, who were vaccinating children in a nearby street, were unharmed, the official said.

Shahid Rind, a government spokesman in Balochistan, denounced the attack, which came two days after Pakistan launched a weeklong nationwide vaccination campaign aimed at protecting 45 million children from polio.

According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the spread of the natural version of the potentially fatal, paralyzing virus has never been stopped. There are ongoing outbreaks in at least six African countries prompted by mutated viruses linked to the oral polio vaccine.

Police and health workers are often attacked by militants who falsely claim that vaccination efforts are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.

Pakistan saw a surge in polio cases last year, with 74 reported cases compared to just one in 2021. The South Asian country reported just six cases since January.

Since the 1990s, more than 200 polio workers and the police assigned to protect them have been killed in attacks.