Two policemen guarding polio teams killed in Mohmand attack as four workers are abducted in Tank
Gunmen killed two policemen escorting a polio vaccination team in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mohmand district, a day after four polio workers were abducted in Tank, in a fresh blow to Pakistan’s campaign to wipe out the disease.
Two policemen guarding a polio vaccination team have been killed in an attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mohmand district, in the latest violence against a campaign that health workers say is already carried out under extraordinary pressure.
Police said the officers were travelling to join a polio team for security duty on Tuesday when unidentified gunmen opened fire near the Hashim Kor police checkpost in the Dag Tamanzai area of Pindiali tehsil. The martyred policemen were identified as Constables Zahoor Khan and Arbai Khan, while a third officer, Sepoy Sabir Khan, was injured in the firing.
District police officials said the team had been on its way to provide protection to vaccinators working in a nearby village when it came under attack. Reports of the incident said the gunmen struck as the police party moved from its post towards the village, leaving the two constables dead at the scene.
Separately, and a day earlier, four polio workers were abducted by unidentified armed men in the province’s Tank district. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi took notice of the abduction reports and directed the authorities to take immediate and effective measures for the workers’ safe recovery.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the firing on the police personnel deployed to protect the polio team in Mohmand, according to reports of the official reaction. The condemnation underlined how attacks on vaccination teams have become a recurring security challenge rather than an isolated incident.
The violence struck in the middle of a major immunisation drive. Pakistan began a nationwide campaign on 2 November, running until 8 November, aiming to vaccinate nearly 24 million children under the age of five across 97 high-risk districts. The drive is part of the country’s long effort to eradicate a disease that remains endemic in only two countries in the world: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
That effort had already suffered a setback days earlier. On 1 November, the National Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication confirmed Pakistan’s eighth polio case of 2026, involving a 13-month-old girl from Khyber district. Each new case sharpens the urgency of reaching every child, and each attack on a team makes that task harder in the districts where access is already most difficult.
Anti-polio teams in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have repeatedly faced threats, and officials have long blamed militant groups that spread false claims about vaccination. Health workers say the security escorts are essential precisely because vaccinators, many of them working door to door in remote areas, cannot safely reach children without protection.
For the families in Mohmand and Tank, the immediate questions are stark: whether the abducted workers will be found unharmed, and whether the campaign can continue safely in their districts in the days that remain. The governor’s direction for swift action puts the focus on the recovery effort, while police in Mohmand face the task of identifying the attackers.
What happens next will be watched well beyond the two districts. If the campaign is disrupted in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, health officials fear that unvaccinated children could leave gaps through which the virus can keep circulating. If, instead, the drive continues with stronger protection and the abducted workers return safely, it would show that even a violent week need not derail a programme on which the country’s polio-free future depends.
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