Anti-Polio Campaign Worker Shot Dead in Pakistan »

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A volunteer in a
polio vaccination campaign was killed and
her colleague wounded in an attack by
militants near Peshawar on Tuesday, a
district administration official said.
The volunteers were going door to door to
give oral anti-polio drops to children in Sheik
Muhammadi, on the southern fringes of
Peshawar, when two gunmen opened fire on
them and fled, according to the deputy city
commissioner of Peshawar, Javed Marwat. A
police official said that a search operation
had begun but that no arrests had been
made.
Mr. Marwat said the women had not asked
to be accompanied by security.
“Probably, they thought it was good not to
go with a police escort and become a target,”
he said.
The government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa,
the surrounding province, announced after
previous attacks that it would send police
escorts with polio vaccination teams. Most
such violence has been attributed to the
Pakistani Taliban, who have criticized
vaccination efforts as a cover for Western
espionage. Also, religious extremists claim
that the real aim of vaccination campaigns is
to sterilize Pakistan’s Muslim population.
The continued violence has seriously
hampered the campaign of polio
immunization in Pakistan, which is one of
the three countries in the world where polio
is endemic.
A total of 1,803 teams are involved in a
three-day round of anti-polio work that
began on Tuesday, an official in the health
department said. Four cases of polio have so
far been detected in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Province this year, among the 12 cases
discovered throughout Pakistan, the official
said.
No group claimed responsibility for the
shooting on Tuesday. Mr. Marwat said a
meeting had been called to decide whether
to suspend or continue the polio vaccination
campaign.
Last week, militants opened fire on a polio
vaccination team in the northwestern tribal
belt, killing a paramilitary soldier protecting
the workers.
The killings have underscored the dangers
that the campaigns face in the region, which
is the major center of infections in Pakistan.
The effort involves 682 teams that aim to
vaccinate 223,570 children.