More Attacks on Pakistan Polio Workers, UNICEF and WHO Suspend Work

Gunmen killed three people working on a polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan on Wednesday, officials said, as the nationwide drive against the crippling disease suffered a third day of bloodshed.

A female health worker and her driver were shot dead in Charsadda, near Peshawar, the main town of northwest Pakistan, police official Wajid Khan told Agence France Presse. A second police officer confirmed the incident.

Another worker shot and critically wounded in an earlier attack on the outskirts of Peshawar also died, doctor Ahmad Saqlain of the city's Lady Reading Hospital told AFP.

Following the attacks, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization suspended work on the campaigns.

UNICEF spokesman Michael Coleman told AFP the two organizations halted polio work in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces on Tuesday after attacks in Karachi and Peshawar, but extended the suspension nationwide after fresh the bloodshed on Wednesday.

Pakistan, one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic, launched a three-day nationwide immunization campaign, supported by the U.N., to tackle the crippling disease on Monday.

But violence has blighted every day of the campaign. 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.

Efforts to tackle the highly infectious disease in Pakistan have been hampered over the years by local suspicion about vaccination.

The Taliban banned immunizations in the tribal region of Waziristan, condemning the campaign as a cover for espionage after the jailing of a doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden using a hepatitis vaccination program.