Taliban blast at Pakistan polio centre kills 17

At least 17 people, including 13 policemen, were killed and more than 30 injured in a suicide blast by Taliban near a polio vaccination centre in Pakistan’s Quetta city on Wednesday.

The officers had been gathering outside the centre in Satellite Town area to accompany polio workers for the third day of a vaccination campaign in the restive province of Balochistan, of which Quetta is the capital.

Bomb disposal squad and security personnel arrived at the scene. The blast site was cordoned off and the injured were shifted to the civil hospital in Quetta.

According to bomb disposal squad, seven kilograms of explosives were used in the attack.

Condemning the incident, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the government was committed to stamping out extremism from the country and the operation will continue till elimination of terrorism.

He said the Pakistan Army had destroyed hideouts of terrorists and is now engaged to eliminate terrorists.

Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Balochistan governor Mohammad Khan Achakzai and Sardar Sanaullah Zehri have also condemned the blast and directed to provide all best medical facilities to the injured.

Balochistan home minister Sarfaraz Bugti said investigations had been launched into the incident.

“We are living in a war zone and I can’t say anything about the nature of the blast,” he added.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic but attempts to eradicate it have been badly hit by opposition from militants and attacks on immunisation teams that have claimed more than 80 lives since December 2012.

The militants claim that the polio vaccination drive is a front to espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.

The most recent attack came in November last year, when unknown gunmen shot and killed the head of an immunisation programme in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district of Swabi.

The expanded immunisation programme was launched in Pakistan in 1978 to protect children by immunising them against diseases, including polio.

Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that primarily affects young children. It can lead to paralysis and death. The virus is easily preventable through immunisation, but there is no cure once it is contracted.

Apart from attacks on vaccination teams, Balochistan has been racked for decades by a separatist insurgency that was revived in 2004.