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Daesh disrupts polio vaccination in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar: Officials

An Afghan health worker administers the polio vaccine to a child during a vaccination campaign in Herat province on August 18, 2015. ©AFP

Daesh Takfiri terrorists have disrupted a national polio vaccination campaign in three districts of Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, local officials say.

Health officials in Nangarhar said Saturday that Daesh prevented some 46,000 children from receiving polio vaccines in the three districts.

“Our employees were not able to launch the campaign in Achin, Haskamina and Mina Kot districts in the province due to Daesh presence,” said Najibullah Kamawal, the head of the Nangarhar health department.

The nationwide anti-polio campaign was launched by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health last week.

Kamawal added that Daesh terrorists have shut down 10 health care centers in the districts, “and people there face a lot of issues."

A number of religious leaders and civil society activists in Nangarhar have denounced the move by Daesh terrorists as “an act of oppression against the children.”

“We call on warring factions to cooperate with medical teams,” said religious scholar, Maulavi Abbas.

War-torn Afghanistan is fighting a polio epidemic, which infects large crowds of people every year.

Nangarhar has been witnessing a surge in the presence of Daesh terrorists in recent months.

The terrorists, mainly operating in Iraq and Syria, have reportedly been recruiting militants in Afghanistan over the past months in what is believed to be aimed at establishing sanctuaries in areas traditionally seen as the strongholds of Taliban militants.

On June 16, the Taliban warned Daesh ringleader, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, against “waging a parallel insurgency in Afghanistan,” asking the Daesh leader to keep his men out of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has been the scene of violence since the US and its allies invaded the country as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror in 2001.


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