LANDI KOTAL: A gunman shot dead a health worker here late on Saturday evening.

Family sources said that Akhtar Khan, a supervisor in Expanded Programme for Immunisation, was sitting in his private clinic in Khuga Khel area when a gunman shot and killed him on the spot. Akhtar Khan’s clinic was situated in a residential locality and had no security.

Khasadar officials said that they took a local resident into custody after a son of the deceased told officials that he saw the arrested man entering his father’s clinic and later heard gunshots being fired there. The arrested man was identified as Hayatullah who was shifted to local lockup for interrogation.

Banned militant group Lashkar-i-Islam claimed responsibility for killing the EPI supervisor in a telephone contact with this correspondent from an Afghan mobile number.

The LI spokesman, however, did not specify as to why an EPI worker was targeted.

Some two months ago, unidentified men had distributed pamphlets in the same locality warning health workers not to conduct polio vaccination campaign and also local parents to desist from sending their daughters to school.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2016