Twelve of the dead were police officers, officials said, with a further 24 wounded in latest attack on disease vaccinators

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Fifteen members of Pakistan’s security forces were killed when the office of the UN-backed anti-polio campaign was attacked by a suspected suicide bomber.

Officials said 12 policemen and one member of the paramilitary Frontier Corps were killed on Wednesday when a bomb exploded near the polio eradication centre in the heart of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province.



Another 24 people were wounded, with the local hospital saying nine were in a critical condition.

The provincial interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti, said the police had given their lives to protect an anti-polio team that was preparing to start a third day of vaccinating children in Quetta.

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“According to an initial investigation, police and security forces resisted a suspect who tried to get inside the building when the powerful blast occurred,” he said.



Police officer Imtiaz Shah said he was unable to confirm whether a suicide bomber was responsible for a blast that destroyed three vehicles and left the area strewn with body parts.



Polio vaccinators have been the target of deadly militant attacks across the country for years. Pakistan is one of just two countries where the crippling childhood disease is still endemic, in large part because of resistance from jihadis groups who fear the anti-polio campaign is part of a foreign plot to reduce Muslim fertility rates.

Militants also accuse health workers of using their work as cover for intelligence gathering – a suspicion deepened by the revelation that the CIA used a phoney hepatitis B campaign in its hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

In 2012, a Pakistani Taliban commander announced bans on vaccinators working in North and South Waziristan, volatile tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility by any group for Wednesday’s attack.

Although Balochistan is beset by Islamist and separatist militancy, security in Quetta has greatly improved in the last 18 months after a crackdown by security forces.

Habib Iqbal, a student who was riding his motorbike near the scene of the attack, said he initially mistook the shaking caused by the blast for an earthquake.



He said it was the 10 minutes of sustained gunfire following the blast that caused the most public panic. He did not know whether militants were responsible for any of the shooting.

“I could see a number of policemen lying on the ground and shouting,” he said. “Those who were uninjured were firing into the open sky.”



Despite the carnage, the vaccination drive was launched later in the day amid heavy security.









