Militants kill three polio vaccination workers in Pakistan

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Three female polio vaccination workers and their driver have been killed in Pakistan in the most deadly attack on health workers in two years.

Pakistani police said the team were killed on the way to meet a police escort in the south western city of Quetta.

“Two men on a motorcycle intercepted the van and shot the occupants using a handgun,” he said.

A senior doctor at Quetta’s Civil Hospital, Rasheed Jamali said a male and a female health worker died on their way to hospital while two female workers died of their wounds in hospital.

He said three other women were being treated, but they were out of danger.

District health officer Sher Muhammad said a vaccination campaign was launched in eight districts of Baluchistan including Quetta three days ago.

“It was the last day of the campaign to administer drops to the remaining children,” he said, adding that the campaign was stopped in Quetta after the attack.

Taliban militants in Pakistan often target health workers trying to immunise children against polio, claiming the campaign is a cover for western spies, or an attempt to sterilise the population.

Officials said the number of polio cases recorded in Pakistan has reached 246 for the year – a 14-year high and more than double the total for the whole of 2013.

Among the new cases detected, 136 are in the troubled northwestern tribal areas that border Afghanistan and are the stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest but least developed and most sparsely populated province, is also racked by Islamist militants, banditry and sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

AFP/Reuters