Two anti-polio health workers have been gunned down in Pakistan's volatile north-western tribal region in an apparent attack aimed at derailing the ongoing efforts for eradicating the endemic disease from the South Asian nation, local media reported on Sunday.
The two health workers were reportedly attacked while they were on a vaccination drive in Kandar village in the north-western district of Swabi. Officials were quoted as saying that unidentified gunmen arrived on foot and escaped after shooting dead the health workers.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Taliban, which had banned immunization in the country's tribal region condemning it as a cover for espionage, had warned against the recent campaign.
In December, the Pakistani government and the United Nations had temporarily suspended a UNICEF-led nationwide anti-polio drive due to safety concerns after a wave of gun attacks killed at least nine health workers in the country's northwest.
The extensive anti-polio drive targets an estimated 5.2 million Pakistani children. Incidentally, Pakistan is one of three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic.
Notably, the attack on the health workers came as Pakistan was mourning the death of at least 14 female students in a suicide attack on a bus belonging to the Sardar Bahadur Khan Women's University in Quetta, capital of the volatile Balochistan province, on Saturday.
A subsequent militant attack on a hospital treating those injured in the bus bombing killed some eleven more people. An outlawed Pakistani Sunni militant outfit calling itself the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) has since claimed responsibility for the two attacks.
The LeJ, an al-Qaeda-linked group, is closely associated with other Sunni militant bands in the country like the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the Jaish-e-Muhammad. It has carried out several such attacks on the minority Shia community in Pakistan in recent years, including a couple of deadly bomb attacks on the Hazara Shia community in Quetta.
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