PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen shot dead a police officer and wounded four others assigned to protect a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, a police official said.
The incident took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province’s Hangu district in the Chapri Waziran area, Hangu police spokesperson Saqib Khan said, as Pakistan launched a nationwide anti-polio drive earlier today.
The gunmen opened fire at the police personnel, prompting them to respond to the attack. Both sides exchanged gunfire for an hour, the police official said.
“As a result of the attack, one officer died and four others were injured,” Khan told Arab News.
He added that additional police and security forces personnel have been deployed in the area to trace the assailants. Khan said the injured police officers were admitted to a nearby hospital for treatment.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistan launched a nationwide anti-polio drive on Monday morning to vaccinate 45 million children against the disease. The National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said around 400,000 health workers will go door-to-door to vaccinate children against the disease.
Polio mostly affects children under the age of five and sometimes causes lifelong paralysis. It can be easily prevented by oral administration of a few drops of a vaccine.
Over the past decade, hundreds of police officers and health workers have been killed by militants waging an offensive against the Pakistani state, especially in KP.
In the past, firebrand clerics falsely claimed the vaccine contained pork or alcohol, forbidding it for consumption by Muslims.
A fake vaccination campaign organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency in Pakistan in 2011 to track Osama bin Laden compounded the mistrust among locals.
So far, Pakistan has reported only one polio case this year. However, in 2026, poliovirus was detected in 23 of 87 districts, compared to 82 districts in 2025.
The number of positive polio environmental samples has also dropped sharply, from 651 in 2025 to 40 so far in 2026, the NEOC said in a statement on Monday.
