The U.S. State Department on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chinese research institute and several companies it said have been involved in supplying Pakistan's ballistic missile program.

Washington similarly targeted three China-based companies with sanctions in October 2023 for supplying missile-applicable items to Pakistan, Reuters reported.

Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement that the Beijing Research Institute of Automation for Machine Building Industry had worked with Pakistan to procure equipment for testing rocket motors for the Shaheen-3 and Ababeel systems and potentially for larger systems.

The sanctions also targeted China-based firms Hubei Huachangda Intelligent Equipment Co, Universal Enterprise, and Xi'an Longde Technology Development Co, alongside Pakistan-based Innovative Equipment and a Chinese national, for knowingly transferring equipment under missile technology restrictions, Miller said.

"As today’s actions demonstrate, the United States will continue to act against proliferation and associated procurement activities of concern, wherever they occur," Miller said.

Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington, said: "China firmly opposes unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction that have no basis in international law or authorization of the UN Security Council."

China will "firmly protect" Chinese companies' and individuals' rights and interests, Liu said.

Pakistan's embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unidentified assailants opened fire on a polio vaccination team in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing one of those handing out doses and one policeman escorting him, police said.

The attack in the region bordering Afghanistan comes two days after Pakistan launched its latest national campaign to stamp out the virus, which still poses a health threat in the South Asian nation, although mostly eradicated elsewhere, Reuters reported.

"Unidentified armed men opened fire on polio vaccination team in a subdivision of Bajaur tribal district as they were on the vaccination campaign," district police officer Waqas Rafique told Reuters.

No group has claimed responsibility, but previously Islamist militant groups in the region have claimed similar attacks on polio teams, falsely portraying the inoculation campaigns as a Western conspiracy to sterilise children.

Pakistan began its latest national campaign earlier this week, aiming to administer the vaccine to up to 30 million children, the prime minister's office said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world still struggling to eradicate polio, read the report.

A local police union group called for a strike by policemen and a boycott of security duties for the vaccination campaign in the Bajaur district following the killing of their colleague.

Reports of Iranian weapons transfers to Russia are "ugly propaganda" to conceal Western military support to Israel, Iran's foreign ministry said on Tuesday, after Western powers said they would impose new sanctions on Tehran over the issue, Reuters reported.

"The publication of false and misleading reports about the transfer of Iranian weapons to some countries is simply an ugly propaganda to conceal the large illegal arms support of the United States and some Western countries for the genocide in Gaza," foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a post on X, without mentioning the new sanctions.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that Russia had received ballistic missiles from Iran and would likely use them in Ukraine within weeks, warning that cooperation between Moscow and Tehran threatened wider European security.

Alongside the United States, Britain, Germany and France said they would apply new sanctions on Iran, including measures against its national airline Iran Air, read the report.

London, Berlin and Paris also announced the cancellation of bilateral air services agreements with Tehran.

"This action by the three European countries is the continuation of the West's hostile policy and economic terrorism against the people of Iran, and it will face a proportionate response by Iran," Kanaani said in a later statement published on the foreign ministry's Telegram page.

Iran is already one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, and some experts have questioned the impact of more economic penalties that might hurt the middle classes more than the country's leaders, Reuters reported.