During an attack on the polio drive in the western areas of the country, a policeman was martyred while protecting the vaccination team in the Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Monday. According to media reports, some unknown armed persons attacked the polio vaccination team in the Shakarkhel area of the Terai Police Station in Karak, resulting in the death of one police official. As per the channel report, the armed attack also left a polio worker injured, leading to widespread panic in the area.

The channel reported that the slain police official was identified as Irfan. District Police Officer (DPO) Khan Khail arrived at the crime scene, and a search operation is currently underway in the vicinity. Police have surrounded the area with heavy reinforcement in pursuit of unknown assailants responsible for the attack. Karak is the headquarters of Karak District in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Karak is said to be the single district in Pakistan that is  inhabited by only one tribe of Pashtuns — the Khattaks.

It is also worth mentioning that, due to security reasons, the polio campaign in Balochistan has been postponed for one day upon the request of the Home Department. The seven-day polio campaign was supposed to begin today. The Balochistan Home Department wrote a letter to the Secretary of Health to postpone the polio campaign for one day because the department had expressed security concerns based on intelligence information.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)