The bomber struck amidst a heavy contingent of police, Balochistan Constabulary (BC) and Frontier Corps (FC) outside the Health Care Centre in Satellite Town as policemen prepared to escort vaccinators on the last day of a three-day immunisation campaign.
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At least 14 security personnel and one civilian were killed and 25 others injured when a blast targeted an anti-polio drive in Quetta city of Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province on Wednesday.
Thirteen of the dead are policemen while one of them is an FC official, he said. “We’re in a war zone”, he said.
Eyewitness Shabbir Ahmed, a 32-year-old police constable, said he had been deployed to protect a polio-vaccination team that was due to leave for various neighbourhoods of Quetta at 10am.
” Bugti said it was being investigated whether it was a suicide attack or a bomb blast”. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the attack on Facebook and in an email sent to journalists. He warned of more attacks on polio teams in the future. It’s the latest attack in an ongoing campaign of violence against polio vaccination campaigns in the region, which the Taliban and affiliated groups accuse, variously, of being a plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies.
The clerics also point to the case of a Pakistani doctor who was said to have run a fake vaccination program for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to help track down al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Some Pakistanis are also suspicious about the vaccinations, fearing it will sterilise their children. However, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah denied it, saying “All Pakistanis working at the Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad are safe.,.no one has been injured”, he said. He spoke to reporters from the scene, which was strewn with blood and debris, as rescuers took the wounded to hospitals. The campaign in Quetta has been suspended following the blast.
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Quetta is the capital of the restive Balochistan province, which is home to a separatist insurgency that has been raging since 2004, with rebels frequently targeting government personnel and facilities.
