"The blast was apparently carried out by a suicide bomber," Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti told media after the blast.
At least 15 people, mostly security officials, were killed and over 10 others injured on Wednesday in a bomb blast apparently carried out by a suicide bomber outside a polio vaccination centre in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta.
"The blast was apparently carried out by a suicide bomber," Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti told media after the blast. At least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and one civilian were among the dead, with 20 others injured, officials said, after the explosion ripped through a police van that had just arrived at the centre.
Eyewitness at the site said they heard firing after a loud blast rocked the area. The victims have been shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta, where an emergency has been imposed, the Dawn reported. Police and rescue workers reached the site soon after the blast, while security forces have cordoned off the area.
It is the third day of a three-day anti-polio campaign which was launched in Quetta and other districts of Balochistan on Monday. The campaign is to target 2.4 million children under the age of five. Over 55,000 children of Afghan refugees are to be immunised under the campaign.
Polio teams were being dispatched from the polio centre targeted on Wednesday in the blast, security sources said. Pakistan remains one of only two countries on the World Health Organisation's (WHO) list of polio-endemic countries.
Teams in Pakistan working to immunise children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing vaccines designed to sterilise children. The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down in 2015, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort.
More details await.
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 "Five killed in blast near Quetta polio centre in Pakistan")
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