Gunmen on motorcycle kill 2 police guarding polio workers in Pakistan

Suspected militants rolled up on a motorcycle and opened fire on police assigned to protect polio workers in Pakistan's northwest on Tuesday, killing two officers and wounding a third. The drive-by attack happened in Mohmand, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that sits on the Afghan border. The officers were on their way to guard vaccination teams in a nearby village when the bullets started flying, police officer Ayaz Khan said. The shooters vanished. No group has stepped forward to claim it.

Health workers in this part of the world run a gauntlet every campaign season. The Pakistani Taliban and other militant outfits have repeatedly targeted anti-polio drives and the police shielding the vaccinators, pushing a false claim that the shots are a Western plot to sterilize children.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi didn't mince words from Islamabad, calling the killings intolerable and offering condolences to the families of the slain officers. He said the men gave their lives working toward a healthier future for the country.

The bloodshed wasn't isolated. A day earlier, suspected militants abducted four polio workers in Tank, another Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district, according to a statement from provincial Gov. Faisal Karim Kundi. He condemned the kidnappings and pressed authorities to move fast to bring the workers home safely.

All of it lands in the middle of a major national effort. Pakistan kicked off a nationwide campaign Monday aiming to vaccinate 24 million children against polio. Along with neighboring Afghanistan, it remains one of only two countries where wild poliovirus is still endemic, according to the World Health Organization.

For now, the attackers are still out there and the vaccination drive grinds on, with officers like the two killed Tuesday standing between the teams and the threat.