Gunmen attacked a police vehicle assigned to protect a polio vaccination team, killing two officers and wounding another in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday, a police official told AFP.
Militants opened fire on the officers' vehicle while it was travelling near the Afghan border in Mohmand district, police official Ali Rehman Khan said, without specifying which group they believed was behind the attack.
"Two police personnel were martyred and another was injured in the attack. However, no polio vaccination staff were present in the police vehicle," he said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting in the border province where security forces are battling an intensifying militancy they say emanates from Afghanistan -- an accusation its Taliban government denies.
In a separate incident in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Tank district, four police officers on their way to provide security for a polio vaccination team were abducted on Monday and efforts were underway to recover them, district police official Abdul Samad told AFP.
Pakistan is one of two countries, along with Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic, but militants have killed hundreds of police officers and health workers over the past decade as part of a campaign against the Pakistani state.
Polio, a highly infectious disease mainly affecting children under five, can result in lifelong paralysis but is easily prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of a vaccine.
Misinformation about the vaccine is widespread in rural Pakistan, including false claims that it is part of a CIA plot to prevent Muslims from having children.
Attacks on polio vaccination workers and their police escorts have previously been claimed by the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups it is linked to.
