Nine polio workers killed in northern Nigeria

"Nine female polio vaccinators have been killed in two shootings at health centers in northern Nigeria, police have told the BBC," the news agency reports. "In the first attack in Kano the polio vaccinators were shot dead by gunmen who drove up on a motor tricycle," and "[t]hirty minutes later gunmen targeted a clinic outside Kano city as the vaccinators prepared to start work," BBC News writes (2/8). "Islamist militant group Boko Haram -- a sect which has condemned the use of Western medicine -- has been blamed for carrying out a spate of assaults on security forces in the city in recent weeks," Reuters writes (2/8). "Nigeria remains one of the few countries left in the world where polio remains endemic," the Associated Press notes, adding, "Several years ago religious clerics had some of their followers stop receiving the vaccines saying that it would sterilize their children" (Rabiu, 2/8).