Militants Gun Down 5 Teachers, 2 Aid Workers in Pakistan

May be related to campaign targeting anti-polio efforts

Hundreds of villagers in northwest Pakistan turned out Wednesday to bury five female teachers and two health workers who were gunned down a day earlier by militants in what may have been the latest in a series of attacks targeting anti-polio efforts in the country.

The seven had worked at a community center in the town of Swabi that included a primary school and a medical clinic that vaccinated children against polio. Some militants oppose the vaccination campaigns, accusing health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and alleging the vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.
As mourners carried the coffins through the town for burial Wednesday, family and friends expressed horror that such an attack had struck their community.