Anti-polio drive: 2 lady health workers, police guard shot dead

Health officials suspend immunisation campaign in the area

SWABI/ MANSEHRA:

Gunmen shot dead two lady health workers and their police escort in Mansehra district, forcing suspension of the polio vaccination campaign for an indefinite period of time. The suspension order came on the second day of the campaign.

Two unidentified gunmen opened fire at the vaccination team near the Brairi camps for Afghan refugees, half a kilometre away from the city limits, DPO Ehjaz Khan told The Express Tribune.

At the time of the attack, he said, the health workers were administering the polio drops to young villagers in Danna Sheikhabad. “They all were shot in the head and torso,” police and hospital sources said.



The injured were shifted to the King Abdullah Teaching Hospital where a health worker, Sitara Gul, and a police constable, Mushtaq, were pronounced dead while another worker, Kaneez Nargis, succumbed to the injuries during treatment. However, residents accused the police of delay in shifting the injured to hospital which caused their deaths.

Waheed, a relative of one of the slain polio workers, said the SHOs of police stations City, Khaki and Saddar were seen bickering over the territorial jurisdiction and delayed lodging of the FIR.

The DPO said no group has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly attack but probabilities of involvement of banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan could not be ruled out. Police hunt was still on for the attackers and the area has also been cordoned off by police commandos, he added.

The health department has suspended the polio vaccination campaign across the district following the incident and new dates would be announced later, an official at the office of District Officer Health told The Express Tribune.

The prime minister’s Focal Person on Polio Eradication senator Ayesha Raza Farooq and Minister for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar expressed deep sorrow at the Mansehra attack.

Suspects held in Swabi

A police squad arrested some 22 suspects during a search operation after an unidentified man started indiscriminate aerial firing the moment he learnt that a polio immunisation team guarded by police was approaching the neighbourhood of Minai area of Swabi on Tuesday.

The armed man fled towards the hilly area when the police fired gunshots into the air in retaliation, a Swabi police official said. He added that as the anti-polio campaign was under way across the county, a polio team along with police was immunising children in the Minai area.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2015.