Officials have confirmed today that Taliban gunmen killed one police officer in Pakistan and injured another to protect polio vaccination workers.
The terror group struck out in Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the second day of a five-day anti-polio drive in a bid to vaccinate more than 6million children.
Eyewitnesses said that two gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on a security team accompanying the polio vacciners. One was killed instantly, while the other one sustained serious injuries.
Mohammad Khurasani, spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Previous statements by the Taliban denounced the use of polio vaccines as part of a Western conspiracy.
Terrorists promised to launch violent attacks on those who supply or use it.
Since the announcement of the end to a one month ceasefire with Government, Saturday was the TTP’s first attack on vaccination workers.
Two police officers were shot, one killed, by Taliban gunmen in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday. Pictured: Two Pakistani security officers stand guard at an intersection in Karachi.
On the second day, the terror group attacked in an attempt to immunise more than 6 million children. Pictured: An aide gives the polio vaccine in Peshawar Pakistan to a child.
Sajjad Ahmed, a police officer said that two men on motorbikes opened fire at the team of polio vacciners in Chaddarah. One constable was killed and a Frontier Constabulary officer critically wounded.
The members of the vaccine team weren’t hurt.
Pakistani militants regularly target polio officers and the police who are assigned to their protection. They claim that vaccination campaigns are part of an international conspiracy to sterilize children.
The attack came as a result of Friday’s TTP announcement that a ceasefire had been in place for one month.
The truce was announced during peace negotiations between the sides in November.
According to Aimal Khan speaking on behalf of the campaign, the attack occurred in Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. It was the second day in a five-day antipolio drive that aimed at vaccinating 6.5 million children.
Saturday saw the Pakistani Taliban attack those who were involved in the vaccination campaign since the government announced the end of a one month ceasefire.
Pakistani and Afghan neighbors are still the countries with polio endemic. This is after Nigeria was declared exempted from it last year.
Warwick University research shows that vaccine hesitancy in the United States is high, in part due to a failed CIA plan to expel Osama Bin Laden in early 2010.
In May 2011, the study revealed that the operation in 2011 led to an increase in vaccine rates of up to 40% in the next year.
Children living in close proximity to a compound at Abbottabad where the US intelligence placed Al Qaeda’s former leader, received free hepatitis B vaccinations. This was the CIA’s ruse.
A local doctor was recruited to make the programme look authentic — but the real goal was to try to confirm that Bin Laden was hiding in the region by obtaining a DNA match.
The DNA of Bin Laden’s sister was already available to the CIA, and they were hoping for a copy from one of his children.
Soon after Bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011, news of the plot broke. It was used by the Taliban to inflame conspiracy theories that discredit public health programmes.