15 dead in Pakistani explosion

The policemen had been gathering outside the centre to accompany polio workers for the third day of a vaccination campaign.

The deceased include 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and two civilians, a police official said. Another 23 people were wounded, he said.

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.

The officials fear that there could be more deaths in blast as five of the injured were said to be in serious condition.

The past assault on a polio goal in Pakistan is believed to have taken place in northwestern Swabi district in November 2015, when the local polio coordinator was shot dead by unknown gunmen.

“The Secretary-General reiterates that nothing justifies terrorism”, said a statement released by Ban’s spokesperson. Separate militant groups, the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, a Taliban splinter group, both claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.

“Body pieces of the suicide bomber have been collected by security agencies to initiate a probe into the incident”, an official was quoted as saying by the Dawn. He warned of more attacks on polio teams in the future.

The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani.

Pakistan is one of only two countries where polio, a crippling childhood disease, remains endemic.

The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down past year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort. Polio vaccination teams are frequently targeted by militant attacks in Pakistan.

In that year, Pakistan recorded its highest number of polio cases since 1999. Since the United States claimed the use of a phony vaccination program to track down Osama bin Laden, many in Pakistan have treated vaccination programs as probable shams or foreign plots.

Quetta is the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, which has seen a yearslong insurgency by nationalist and separatist groups, who have been fighting for greater shares in the region’s natural mineral resources.