Killings hit anti-polio drive in Pakistan A drive to eradicate polio has been suspended in parts of Pakistan after suspected Islamist militants killed at least six health workers in co-ordinated attacks over 24 hours. The World Health Organisation, the UN Children's fund, Unicef, and the Pakistani authorities condemned the murders, saying they put the lives of children at risk and threatened to undermine a global attempt to eradicate the highly infectious and potentially crippling disease from its last remaining strongholds in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. IN Pakistan "We call on the leaders of the affected communities and everyone concerned to do their utmost to protect health workers and create a secure environment so that we can meet the health needs of the children of Pakistan," the WHO and Unicef said in a joint statement. The government of Pakistan and the affected provinces have temporarily suspended the vaccination campaign due to concerns over safety of health workers. The organisations said at least six people working on a vaccination campaign had been reported shot dead in Karachi in the south, the country's biggest city, and Peshawar in the north. Islamist militants of the Pakistani Taliban and other groups are active in both places. As in the north of Nigeria, some Pakistani preachers have portrayed such vaccination campaigns as sinister western attempts to sterilise Muslims. Fears of western plots have been reinforced by the disclosure that the US Central Intelligence Agency ran a bogus vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in order to gather evidence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader assassinated last year in a raid by US special forces. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor involved, has been detained by Pakistan as a suspected spy. "People in our rural areas are increasingly suspicious of polio workers ever since Osama bin Laden's killing and the revelations surrounding Dr Afridi," said Talath Naqvi, an activist for the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), an opposition party led by Imran Khan, the former cricket star. But there is also a crisis of [Pakistani] leadership. According to the WHO, polio cases have fallen by more than 99 per cent since 1988 from an estimated 350,000 cases in that year to 650 reported in 2011. However, the WHO says that failure to eradicate polio completely - as was achieved with smallpox - could lead again to a rapid spread of the disease and as many as 200,000 cases a year within a decade across the world. The targeted assassination of vaccination workers is the latest sign that extremist groups are operating with apparent ease in several parts of Pakistan. At the weekend, militants mounted a bold attack on the airport in Peshawar with rockets and bombs, killing four people, wounding dozens more and disrupting flights. The security forces said they killed 10 of the attackers who breached the outer perimeter.