QUETTA: A mother and daughter polio vaccination team were gunned down on Thursday in Quetta as they were immunising children, police said, the latest deaths in the country’s long campaign against the disease.

The duo were killed in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, capital of restive Balochistan.

The assailants escaped unhurt from the site of the attack, police said, as a heavy contingent of law enforcers and Frontier Corps (FC) reached the area.

“Sakina Bibi, 38 and her daughter Rizwana Bibi, 16, were killed by unknown assailants while they were administering polio drops to children,” senior police official Aitzaz Ahmed Goraya said.

He said the pair were on the fourth day of a five-day anti-polio campaign.

“Previously we used to have police personnel providing security to polio workers but we changed it a few months back as it was drawing attention,” Aitzaz said.

“Now we assign polio workers their own neighbourhoods and don’t give them security,” he added.

The incident was confirmed by a senior administration official Amjad Ali Khan.