Gunmen today killed a worker at a Pakistani polio clinic as cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan tries to increase vaccination efforts.
Two others were hurt near Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, in the latest attack on clinic staff by Islamic militants who have killed polio workers and the police protecting them in recent months.
The country is one of only three where the polio virus is still endemic.
Earlier this week Khan demanded an end to the attacks, and without naming the Pakistani Taliban, said those responsible “are doing injustice to our province, our country and the whole of humanity.”
He has pledged personally to spearhead polio vaccination efforts in the troubled northwest of the country, which remains a hotspot for the crippling disease.
Islamic militants oppose vaccination against polio and consider such campaigns a cover for spying.
They also claim the vaccine is part of a plot intended to make Muslim boys sterile.