At least 14 killed near Pakistan polio center

Pakistani security officials examine the site of a bomb blast near a polio vaccination center in Quetta on January 13, 2016.

A suicide bomber yesterday killed at least 16 people, 13 of them policemen, outside a polio-eradication centre in Quetta.

At least 25 people with shells and shrapnel injuries were being treated at Quetta’s Civil Hospital, according to a doctor who asked not to be named.

Polio workers have always been targeted in Pakistan by Islamist groups including the Taliban militants which claim that the polio immunisation drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.

Jundallah spokesman Ahmad Marwat told CNN via text that this group was responsible and that it “will always target polio teams”. The extremists say the vaccination programme is aimed at sterilising children and a cover for Western spies.

“In the coming days, we will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and workers”, he said by telephone.

The minister said that the personnel of Frontier Corps (FC) and Police were escorting the anti-polio campaign volunteers when the blast took place.

“We are living in a war zone”, he said. Tens of thousands have been killed in Pakistan over the past decade in attacks mainly targeting security forces and the country’s Shiite minority. While 14 people died and 10 were injured in an explosion near the polio center, six were killed and 11 injured, when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Pakistan Consulate in Jalalabad.

The blast hit a police van, and police are investigating whether it was a suicide bomb, senior police officer Abdul Waheed Khattak told local TV channels. The Khurasan group of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan also claimed credit for the attack in a statement emailed to journalists by its purported spokesman Mohammad Khorasani.

But officials say that 2015 also saw a significant decline in polio cases, largely because vaccination teams could reach areas that were previously off limits because of militancy.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two states where the condition continues to be endemic. Polio workers in Pakistan have been the victims of several terrorist attacks in recent years.

However, Taliban militants and secular Baluch separatists have been operating in the region.