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Gunmen shot dead six health workers on an anti-polio drive in a string
of attacks in Pakistan over 24 hours, officials said on Tuesday, raising
fears for the future of efforts to eradicate the crippling disease in
one of its last strongholds.
It was not clear who was behind the shootings but Taliban insurgents
have repeatedly denounced the vaccination campaign, which aims to wipe
out polio in one of the last three countries where it is endemic, as a
Western plot.
"Such attacks deprive Pakistani's most vulnerable
population - especially children - of basic life-saving health
interventions," the World Health Organisation and the U.N. Children's
Fund (UNICEF), which are working with the Pakistani government on the
campaign, said in a joint statement.
Health officials suspended
the campaign in two provinces of Pakistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Karachi, the capital of Sindh, is Pakistan's biggest city and home to
18 million people.
Four people were killed in separate attacks on
health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, said the United Nations. Another
health worker was killed in the same city on Monday.
The team had
received telephone calls warning workers they would regret helping the
"infidel" campaign against polio, said health official Gul Naz, who
oversees the project in the area where the four women were shot.
In
the northwestern city of Peshawar, gunmen on a motorbike shot a
17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, said government
official Javed Marwar.
She died of her wounds in hospital, a doctor said Read full articles The Star,NationalPost
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