GUNMEN in Pakistan have opened fire on health workers carrying out polio vaccinations in three new attacks, after the killing of six people involved in the campaign.
Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio is still endemic.
However, efforts to stop the highly infectious disease have been hampered by resistance from the Pakistani Taliban, who have banned vaccination teams from some areas.
Six people working to immunise children against the crippling disease have been shot dead in Pakistan since the start of a UN-backed three-day vaccination campaign on Monday.
Two workers were giving out polio drops in a suburb of Peshawar, in the northwest, when gunmen on a motorbike rode up and sprayed them with bullets, Janbaz Afridi, doctor in charge of the immunisation campaign in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said.
One of the workers was in a critical condition in hospital after the attack, Afridi said.
Senior police official Asif Iqbal confirmed the attack and said police were investigating the motive and who was behind it.
Two other polio teams were targeted in similar attacks in the towns of Nowshera and Charsadda, police and health officials said, but the polio workers escaped unharmed.
One passer-by was slightly injured in Nowshera.
Violence has blighted every day of the polio campaign so far: one health worker was shot dead in Karachi on Monday and four more were killed in the city with another gunned down in Peshawar on Tuesday.
After Tuesday's attacks, the government of Sindh province, of which Karachi is capital, halted the immunisation drive, and Afridi said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government would have no choice but to follow suit.
"We are holding an emergency meeting with our donors and we have no option but to postpone the vaccination campaign for the time being. We will formally announce it after the meeting," he said.
Rumours about polio drops being a plot to sterilise Muslims have long dogged efforts to tackle the disease in Pakistan, but suspicion of vaccination programs intensified after the jailing of a doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden in 2011 using a hepatitis vaccination program.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the polio worker attacks, but in June the Pakistani Taliban banned immunisations in the tribal region of Waziristan, condemning the polio campaign as a cover for espionage.
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