A roadside bomb exploded near a van carrying police assigned to protect workers in an anti-polio immunization campaign in restive northwestern Pakistan on January 8. At least seven officers were killed and 10 others were wounded in an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, officials said.
Police Officers Assigned To Protect Polio Workers Killed In Roadside Attack In Pakistan
A relative caresses the face of a victim after he succumbed to his injuries following a roadside bombing that targeted a police vehicle near the Afghan border in Bajaur, a tribal district in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, on January 8.
The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed at least seven people. Three police officers remain in critical condition.
An injured man is transported to a hospital in Bajaur.
Regional police spokesman Muhammad Asrar told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that the team of police personnel were on their way to guard polio workers performing immunizations in the area when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
Pakistani security officials inspect the scene of the bomb blast.
The attack on the vaccination team comes amid a surge in violence in Pakistan. Over 600 attacks and more than 950 fatalities were reported in 2023, according to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies, a research organization based in Islamabad.
Pakistani security officials stand guard outside the hospital where victims were receiving treatment.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
Several men comfort a relative of a victim...
...as an injured man lies on a stretcher at the hospital.
Relatives and police officials attend the funeral of police officers killed in the blast.
The January 8 attack occurred after the government began another round of its regular vaccination drives.
Islamist extremists frequently target polio vaccination teams and the security forces assigned to protect them, falsely asserting that immunization campaigns are Western plots to sterilize Muslim children.