More polio workers are killed in Pakistan

Seven more aid workers have been shot and killed in Pakistan, just two weeks after the murder of six people working on polio vaccination programmes in the country.1

The workers, six of whom were women, were killed on New Year’s Day near a community centre in the Swabi district in the north west of Pakistan. It is believed that the seven, of whom two were health workers and the rest teachers, were targeted because the community centre where they were working provided polio vaccinations. They might also have been targeted because the centre was educating girls.

The workers were ambushed in their car as they returned to the centre, run by a non-governmental organisation called Support with Working Solutions. The driver was shot but not killed.

Javed Akhtar, …