A paramilitary Levies soldier deployed to protect a polio vaccination team was killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said on Tuesday.
The attack took place in the Matta Town of Swat Valley while a week-long nationwide campaign to inoculate 45 million children was underway, according to District Administration Official Amjad Khan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic. While the country has made major gains since the 1990s when annual cases exceeded 20,000, reducing the toll to eight by 2018, vaccine hesitancy, fueled by misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners, continues to undermine efforts.
“The attackers opened fire on the security team while women polio workers were inside a house administering vaccinations,” he told Arab News. “The deceased identified as Abdul Kabir succumbed to injuries on the spot.”
Pakistan recorded 74 cases in 2024, a sharp rise from six in 2023 and just one in 2021. This year, it has reported 29 polio cases so far, including 18 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, nine from Sindh and one each from Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan’s efforts to eliminate poliovirus have been hampered by parental refusals, widespread misinformation and repeated attacks on anti-polio workers by militant groups. In remote and volatile areas, vaccination teams often operate under police protection, though security personnel themselves have also been targeted and killed in attacks.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the polio vaccination team in Swat’s Matta area, in which a security official was martyred.
The prime minister, in a statement, expressed grief over the martyrdom of Levies personnel Abdul Kabeer, who was on duty to safeguard the polio vaccination team.
Praying for peace for the martyred soul and patience for the bereaved family, he said that the attack on those serving the important cause of polio eradication was intolerable.
“The government is committed to the complete eradication of polio from the country. Despite such resistance from terrorists, the anti-polio campaign continues with full momentum and will go on until the disease is completely eradicated,” he resolved.