PESHAWAR: Gunmen in northwestern Pakistan killed a polio worker and a policeman on Wednesday during the latest campaign to vaccinate millions of children in the country, police said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic despite an effective vaccine. Militants have killed hundreds of officers and polio workers over more than a decade.

“After completing their duties, a polio team was returning to the local (health unit) when two unidentified motorcyclists opened fire on them,” Waqas Rafiq, a senior police official, told AFP.

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He said a police worker and a police officer were killed and a third person was wounded.

The attack happened in Bajaur district, close to the border with Afghanistan, just two days after the Islamic State militant group claimed an improvised bomb attack on a polio vaccination team in the same district that wounded nine people.

Wednesday’s attack happened on the third day of a campaign to vaccinate 30 million children in a week-long campaign, which will now be paused in part of Bajaur district.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the number of polio cases in Pakistan has fallen dramatically from around 20,000 annually in the early 1990s to just eight cases in 2018.

However, there has been a surge in cases again with 17 reported since January compared to only six last year, according to Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Programme.

Police officers are routinely deployed to protect polio workers going door-to-door in restive regions and frequently come under attack by militants waging a war against security forces.