PESHAWAR: A roadside bomb hit a automobile carrying officers assigned to guard well being staff conducting a polio immunization drive in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, wounding six officers and three civilians, officers mentioned.
No polio staff have been damage within the assault in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, native police official Tahrir Sarfraz mentioned.
He mentioned nobody has claimed accountability for the assault, which apparently focused police.
Anti-polio campaigns in Pakistan are often marred by violence. Militants goal vaccination groups and police assigned to guard them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize kids.
The newest assault got here hours after Pakistan launched a drive to vaccinate 30 million kids in opposition to polio. Since January, Pakistan has reported 17 new instances, jeopardizing a long time of efforts to get rid of polio within the nation.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the one international locations through which the unfold of polio has by no means been stopped.
The doubtless deadly, paralyzing illness largely strikes kids beneath age 5 and sometimes spreads by means of contaminated water.
No polio staff have been damage within the assault in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, native police official Tahrir Sarfraz mentioned.
He mentioned nobody has claimed accountability for the assault, which apparently focused police.
Anti-polio campaigns in Pakistan are often marred by violence. Militants goal vaccination groups and police assigned to guard them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize kids.
The newest assault got here hours after Pakistan launched a drive to vaccinate 30 million kids in opposition to polio. Since January, Pakistan has reported 17 new instances, jeopardizing a long time of efforts to get rid of polio within the nation.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the one international locations through which the unfold of polio has by no means been stopped.
The doubtless deadly, paralyzing illness largely strikes kids beneath age 5 and sometimes spreads by means of contaminated water.
