TerrorismSuicide bomber kills 15 outside polio clinic in Quetta, Pakistan
The Taliban’s violent campaign against bringing Western medicine to children in Pakistan, a campaign which focused primarily on disrupting the efforts of the Pakistani government and international NGOs to fight polio, continues. Earlier today (Wednesday), a suicide bomber has killed at least fifteen people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the city of Quetta in western Pakistan.
The Taliban’s violent campaign against bringing Western medicine to children in Pakistan, a campaign which focused primarily on disrupting the efforts of the Pakistani government and international NGOs to fight polio, continues. Earlier today (Wednesday), a suicide bomber has killed at least fifteen people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the city of Quetta in western Pakistan.
The Independent reports that the bomb destroyed a police van which arrived at the center to provide escort vaccination workers which are part of the government drive to immunize all children under five years old in the province of Balochistan.
“It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the provincial police chief told Reuters. “The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign.”
Polio immunization teams in Pakistan have been targeted by Taliban and other Islamist militants, who claim that the campaign is merely a cover for Western spying, and that at least some of the vaccines used are designed to sterilize Muslim children.
The police estimate the bomb contained about five kilograms of explosives.
Health experts note that Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
