Three workers in a polio eradication campaign were shot on Wednesday, and two of them were killed, the latest in an unprecedented string of attacks over the past three days that has partially halted the UN-backed campaign. Wednesday saw four separate attacks, all in the north. In the district of Charsadda, men on motorbikes shot dead a woman and her driver, police and health officials said.

Hours earlier, gunmen wounded a male health worker in the nearby Peshawar. He was in critical condition, said a doctor at the Lady Reading Hospital where he is being treated. Four other women health workers were shot at but not hit in nearby Nowshera, said Jan Baz Afridi, deputy head of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation. Two women health workers were shot at in Dwasaro village in Charsadda, police said. It was not clear who was behind the violence. But a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told Reuters his group was not involved in the violence.

Copyright Reuters, 2012