PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - In a story March 18 about an attack on a polio vaccination team in Pakistan, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the CIA used a polio vaccination campaign in 2011 as a ruse to get information on Osama bin Laden. The vaccination campaign was for hepatitis, not polio.
A corrected version of the story is below:
Attack on polio vaccination team in Pakistan kills 3
Militants ambushed a seven-member medical team vaccinating against polio in a remote tribal region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, killing 2 workers and seriously injuring another 2
By RIAZ KHAN
Associated Press
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) - Militants have ambushed a polio vaccination team in a remote tribal region in Pakistan, killing two of the medical workers and seriously wounding another two, officials said Sunday.
The gunmen also attacked tribal police and the paramilitary Frontier Corps when they responded to the attack late Saturday, killing one paramilitary and wounding another.
Polio workers and vaccination teams have come under attack many times in Pakistan, especially after it was revealed that the CIA used a hepatitis vaccination campaign as a ruse to get information on Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. commandos in Pakistan in 2011.Those revelations fed into claims by Islamic extremists that the vaccinations are part of a Western plot against Muslims.
Pakistan is one of the only countries in the world where polio is still endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.
An official in Pakistan’s restive Mohmand Agency, Younus Khan, said two workers from the seven-member polio vaccination team went missing after the attack but later returned unharmed. He says security forces are still searching for the attackers.
Jamaatul Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed the attack.
Khan said the bodies of the anti-polio workers were handed over to relatives and their funeral will take place later in the day.
Provincial Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra condemned the attack, calling the polio workers “heroes.”
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Associated Press writer Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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