News / Afghanistan

Gunmen kill three female health workers in Afghanistan

Tuesday, 30 March 2021 2:46 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 30 March 2021 2:46 PM ]

Health workers administer a polio vaccine to a child during a polio vaccination campaign in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 30, 2021. (Photo by AP)

Gunmen have shot dead three female polio vaccination health workers in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar, local officials say.

The women, involved in a nationwide polio immunization program, were killed in two separate attacks in the provincial capital city of Jalalabad on Tuesday.

The women were reportedly on duty going from house to house to innoculate children.

Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, the head of the immunization program at Afghanistan's Health Ministry, said an explosion took place at the entrance to the health department for the province of Nangarhar late on Tuesday morning. Around the same time, gunmen killed the vaccination workers at two separate locations in the provincial capital city.

The attacks came in the same week that a polio vaccination campaign for 2021 kicked off across violence-wracked Afghanistan. The program is led by the Afghan Health Ministry, with the involvement of the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF. Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only two countries where the disease is still endemic.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the latest explosion and shootings.

Militant outfits, including the Taliban, have targeted health workers in the past.

Last year, the UN mission to Afghanistan warned that health workers were increasingly at risk in the country. An assault on a Kabul maternity ward in May 2020 killed at least two dozen people, including mothers and newborn babies.

Also recently, a wave of attacks has targeted female medical and media workers.

Earlier in March, a bomb explosion targeted a female doctor in Jalalabad, killing her and wounding a child.

Days before that attack, Daesh terrorists shot dead three female media workers while they were on their way home from work in Jalalabad in two separate attacks.

Female doctor killed in eastern Afghanistan roadside bombing

The Taliban have recently threatened to resume attacks against US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan following remarks by US President Joe Biden that he may extend the US military presence beyond a May 1 deadline.

Under a "peace" deal between the Taliban and the US, Washington vowed to withdraw all the troops remaining in Afghanistan in return for the Taliban stopping attacks on American forces.

However, attacks continue to plague the Asian country.

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