3 female polio vaccination health workers shot dead in Afghanistan

Jalalabad - Three female journalists were killed in Jalalabad this month, an attack claimed by Daesh.

Gunmen killed three female polio vaccination health workers in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday, 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 Afghanistan's Health Ministry told Reuters the explosion took place at the entrance to the health department for the province of Nangarhar late on Tuesday morning.

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.

It was not clear who was behind the attacks. A Taliban spokesman did not immediately respond to request for comment.

A wave of assassinations have hit urban centres since peace talks began between the Taleban and the Afghan government last year in Doha, many of them targeting professional women as well as government employees, media and civil society members.