Peshawar, Oct 24 (PTI) Unidentified gunmen on Sunday shot dead a police constable escorting a team of polio workers in northwest Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the third such incident within a week.

The constable, identified as Ikramullah, was killed by the gunmen riding a motorcycle in Dera Ismail Khan district of the province, police said.

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No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Police have cordoned off the area and launched an operation to nab the culprits.

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Ikramullah is the third policeman to be killed in north-west Pakistan in a week.

On Thursday, gunmen killed a traffic constable, who was returning to his native village after completing polio duty in Chagharmatti area in Peshawar district.

Pakistan is one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its neighbour Afghanistan.

The Pakistan government has suspended the anti-polio drive and post-campaign evaluation in the past following the increasing number of attacks on polio workers in different parts of the country.

Attempts to eradicate the crippling disease have been seriously hampered by deadly targeting of vaccination teams in recent years by militants, who oppose the drives, claiming that the polio drops cause infertility.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)