Suicide
bomber kills at least 15 outside Pakistan polio center
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[January 13, 2016]
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A
suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a
polio eradication center in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday,
the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country.
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Two militant groups - the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, which
has links with the Taliban and has pledged allegiance to Islamic
State - separately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The bomb blew up a police van that had just arrived at the center to
provide an escort for workers in a drive to immunize all children
under five years old in the poor southwestern province of
Baluchistan.
"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."
Ahmed Marwat, who identified himself as a commander and spokesman
for Jundullah, said his group was responsible.
"We claim the bomb blast on the polio office. In the coming days, we
will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and polio
workers," he said by telephone.
The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement
released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani.
Teams in Pakistan working to immunize 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 drugs designed to sterilize children.
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The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary
officer and two civilians, officials said. Twenty-five people were
wounded.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in
the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization
says.
The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent
success, with new cases down last year, but violence against
vaccination workers has slowed the effort.
(Reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Syed Raza Hassan; Additional
reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Jibran Ahmed in
Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore,
Robert Birsel)
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