Polio worker, officer killed in Pakistan: Police

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.

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 Daesh claimed an improvised bomb attack on a polio vaccination team in the same district that wounded nine people.

Pockets of Pakistan's mountainous border regions remain resistant to inoculation as a result of misinformation, conspiracy theories and with some firebrand clerics declaring it un-Islamic.