Health staff on polio vaccine drive shot dead

Gunmen killed three female polio vaccination workers in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, officials said, adding that a blast had also rocked the provincial health department headquarters but left no casualties. Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, head of the immunisation programme at the health ministry, said the explosion took place at the entrance to the health department for Nangarhar province. Around the same time unknown gunmen shot vaccination workers at two separate locations in Jalalabad, killing two volunteers and one supervisor in the polio immunisation programme, all of them women, he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.