KARACHI, Pakistan: Unknown gunmen on a motorcycle killed a policeman on duty to protect a polio vaccination team in Papoosh Nagar area of Karachi on Monday.
In a statement, the senior police official Chaudhry Asad said that the attackers fled the scene successfully after killing the policeman.
However, the polio vaccination drive continued in the area despite the attack, he added.
It was the second incidents of this kind in Pakistan’s largest and most populous metropolitan city as earlier on January 19, the assistant sub inspector (ASI) Tabassum Ali was shot dead while guarding a polio team in Banaras Colony area in Karachi’s Orangi Town No 4.
Last year, Pakistan witnessed nearly 300 polio cases and remains to be one of the three countries in the world where polio is still categorized as an endemic viral infection.
But on the other hand, attempts to eradicate the crippling disease in the country have been badly hit by consistent attacks on polio vaccination teams.
The militant groups continue to target polio workers, claiming that the polio vaccination is a cover for espionage or a Western conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.
Since December 2012, attacks carried out by the militants on polio immunisation teams across the country have claimed 68 lives.
