Four polio workers kidnapped in Tank after gunmen open fire, as governor orders steps for their safe recovery
Four members of a polio vaccination team were abducted by unidentified armed men in Tank district on Monday, a day before two policemen guarding polio workers were killed in Mohmand, in a violent start to Pakistan's week-long immunisation campaign.
Four polio vaccination workers were abducted by unidentified armed men in Tank district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday, after the gunmen opened fire on their team, police accounts reported on Tuesday said.
The incident took place in the village of Jious, in the Sheikh Attar union council, where the armed men intercepted the vaccination team and took the four workers to an undisclosed location, The Express Tribune reported, adding that police had launched an investigation but had no immediate information on the perpetrators or the workers' whereabouts.
ARY News, citing police officials, identified the four abducted workers as UCMO Qadeer, area in-charge Usman, Sameer and Umair, and said they were on polio vaccination duty in a local village when they were taken.
In a separate incident, two members of a polio vaccination team were abducted in the Azam Warsak area of Lower South Waziristan and were subsequently released, according to The Express Tribune, which cited sources as saying the suspects in that abduction were affiliated with the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a claim that has not been independently confirmed.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi took notice of the Tank abduction on Tuesday and directed the relevant authorities to take immediate and effective measures for the safe recovery of the four workers, describing the incident as extremely regrettable and condemnable, Dawn reported.
The abduction came on the first day of a special anti-polio campaign launched on 2 November in 97 selected districts across the country, which is scheduled to run until 8 November with the aim of vaccinating about 24 million children, according to the National Emergency Operations Centre for Polio Eradication.
It was followed on Tuesday by a second attack on the campaign in the province, when gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead two policemen travelling to guard a polio team in Mohmand district and wounded a third officer, an incident already reported separately, underscoring how quickly the week-long drive has come under violent pressure.
Polio teams in Pakistan routinely work under police protection because vaccination drives have repeatedly been targeted. Militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban, have attacked anti-polio campaigns and the officers guarding health workers, spreading false claims that vaccination is part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children, claims that health officials have consistently rejected.
Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus is endemic, according to the World Health Organization, which is why each national campaign is treated as a critical step towards eradication and why attacks on vaccinators draw condemnation from federal and provincial officials alike.
For now, the most urgent unknowns are the condition and location of the four Tank workers and whether the recovery efforts ordered by the governor will secure their release. Police have not named suspects in the Tank case, have not said whether they are treating it as a militant attack or a criminal kidnapping, and have not indicated whether security for vaccination teams in the district will be changed for the remaining days of the campaign.
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