Gunmen in Pakistan mounted fresh attacks yesterday on health workers carrying out polio vaccinations, taking the death toll to eight and prompting UN agencies to suspend work on a campaign opposed by the Taliban.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio is still endemic, but efforts to stamp out the crippling disease have been hampered by resistance from the Taliban, who have banned vaccination teams from some areas.

Eight people – six of them women – working to immunise children against the highly infectious disease have been shot dead in Pakistan during the three-day UN-backed nationwide vaccination campaign which started on Monday.

In the latest attack yesterday, a female health worker and her driver were shot dead in Charsadda near Peshawar, the main town in the northwest, police official Wajid Khan said. A second police officer confirmed the incident.

Another worker was shot and critically wounded while giving out polio drops earlier yesterday on the outskirts of Peshawar.

“Medically he is dead but we have put him on a mechanical ventilator. This is our last try for his life but he is not responding,” Abdul Qadir, neurosurgeon in the intensive care unit of Peshawar’s Lady Reading hospital, said.

Two other polio teams were targeted in similar attacks in Nowshera and Charsadda, police and health officials said, but the workers escaped unharmed. One passer-by was slightly injured in Nowshera.

Violence has blighted every day of the polio 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.

The bloodshed prompted the UN children’s agency Unicef and the World Health Organisation to suspend work on polio campaigns across Pakistan.