Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead five health workers involved in an anti-polio campaign.
No one has claimed responsibility for the shootings but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a Western plot, Reuters reports.
An anti-polio worker was shot dead on Monday and three women were killed the following day in Karachi.
In the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, gunmen on a motorbike shot a 17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, a government official said.
Health authorities have suspended the campaign in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city.
An official says one team had had phone calls warning workers they would regret helping what the callers described as the infidel campaign against polio.
All of the victims were Pakistanis working with a UN-backed programme to eradicate the disease which attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection.
It has been eradicated in all but a handful of countries but at least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year.
