Note yet again the passive voice in the headline. AP, like all news agencies, is extremely fastidious not to name Islamic jihadists and supremacists as actors whenever they commit violence in the name of Islam. And indeed, the perpetrators here are just generic “militants,” with the only hint of who they really are coming in the mention of their paranoid conspiracy theory that the polio vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.
“Pakistan: Vaccine Teams Attacked,” from the Associated Press, December 14 (thanks to Block Ness):
Attacks on polio teams in northwest Pakistan on Friday killed a polio worker and two police officers assigned to protect one of the teams, the police and a government official said. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Pakistani militants have killed more than a dozen polio workers and police officers protecting them over the past year. The militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the United States and claim that the polio vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile. The first attack was near the town of Swabi, about 60 miles northeast of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Hours later, a gunman killed a polio worker on his way home after vaccinating children in Jamrud, on the outskirts of Peshawar.