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2 police martyred, 4 polio workers abducted in KPPakistan
The attacks struck on the second day of a nationwide drive to vaccinate 24 million children, raising fresh fears for the safety of frontline health teams.
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Two police officers guarding a polio vaccination team have been martyred in Mohmand district, while four polio workers were abducted in Tank district, in a grim 48 hours for Pakistan’s campaign to wipe out polio. The attacks have renewed concern about the safety of the health workers who carry the country’s eradication effort door to door.
According to reports carried by Dawn and the Associated Press, the Mohmand attack took place near the Hashim Kor checkpost in Pindiali tehsil, as officers travelled to join a polio team for security duty. Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the police team, martyring two constables and injuring a third officer. The district police officer confirmed the attack happened during the vaccination drive.
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The two martyred officers were identified in local reports as Constables Zahoor and Arabi Khan, while Constable Sabirullah was injured. They were part of the security cover routinely given to vaccination teams in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where polio workers have faced repeated attacks.
In a separate incident a day earlier, four polio workers were abducted in Tank district. According to police accounts, armed men opened fire before seizing the team from Jius village in the Sheikh Attar union council and taking the workers to an undisclosed location. The workers were named in one report as Qadeer, Usman, Sameer and Umair.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi condemned the Tank abduction and called for immediate and effective measures to secure the workers’ safe recovery. Police have launched efforts to trace the abducted workers, but their whereabouts were still unknown at the time of reporting, and no group had claimed responsibility for either incident.
Two more polio workers were abducted in the Azam Warsak area of Lower South Waziristan but were later released, according to reports. Local sources linked that incident to the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, although that claim had not been independently confirmed.
The violence comes during a nationwide campaign running from November 2 to 8 across 97 districts, aiming to reach nearly 24 million children under five. Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries where wild poliovirus is still endemic, according to the World Health Organization, which makes every round of vaccination critical.
Pakistan has reported eight polio cases so far in 2026, six of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the National Emergency Operations Centre. The latest case, a 13-month-old girl from Bara tehsil in Khyber district, was confirmed on Sunday.
Health officials have long warned that attacks on vaccination teams do more than endanger individuals: they disrupt campaigns, leave children unvaccinated, and give the virus room to spread. The latest incidents will test whether security arrangements for the current round are enough to protect teams working in the province’s most vulnerable districts.
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