A mother and daughter polio vaccination team were gunned down Thursday in city as they were immunizing children, police said, the latest deaths in the country's long campaign against the disease. The duo were killed in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of the cit. "Sakina Bibi, 38 and her daughter Rizwana Bibi, 16, were killed by unknown assailants while they were administering polio drops to children," senior police official Aitzaz Ahmed Goraya told AFP.
He said the pair were on the fourth day of a five-day anti-polio campaign. "Previously we used to have police personnel providing security to polio workers but we changed it a few months back as it was drawing attention," Aitzaz said. "Now we assign polio workers their own neighbourhoods and don't give them security," he added. The incident was confirmed by a senior administration official Amjad Ali Khan.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the incident but Taliban militants have attacked polio workers in the country in the past. More than a hundred people have been killed in such attacks since December 2012. In a separate incident, two policemen were gunned down and a third was critically injured as they were riding a motorbike on their way to the police station in Quetta, Aitzaz said. The incident occurred in the centre of the city when assailants riding on a motorbike opened fire on the policemen.
INP adds: Two Balochistan Constabulary personnel were martyred and one injured when they were shot at by unidentified attackers. SSP Operations informed that the officials, part of the Rapid Response Force, were deployed at a flyover on Quetta's Double Road for security duty.
While they were changing their uniforms, the attackers, riding a motorcycle, opened fire on them, injuring all three, and sped away. The injured were taken to Civil Hospital where two officials passed away due to the serious nature of injuries while one is still under treatment. Following the incident, security forces reached the crime scene and sealed it to collect evidence.
The SSP said this is the second incident targeting police in three days in Quetta. A police constable was shot dead by unidentified attackers on the city's Raisani Road on January 16.