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March 28, 2024

Officials: Bomb attack kills 14 in Pakistan polio center

Pakistani

Arshad Butt / AP

Pakistani police officer and rescue workers gather at the site of suicide bombing in Quetta, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. The suicide attack on a polio vaccination center in southwestern Pakistan killed more than a dozen people and wounded many, officials said.

QUETTA, Pakistan — A bomb attack on a polio vaccination center in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday has killed 14 people, officials said.

The bombing of the polio center on the outskirts of Quetta city killed 12 police, a soldier and a civilian, said Syed Imtiaz Shah, the local police chief. Another 23 people were wounded, he said.

The attack appeared to be a suicide bombing, but investigations were ongoing, said police official Shahzada Farhat.

The bomb exploded outside the polio center shortly before vaccination teams were due to be dispatched to local neighborhoods as part of a three-day immunization campaign, Shah said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Polio workers in Pakistan, and their police escorts, have been the victims of several terrorist attacks in recent years.

Pakistani militants accuse polio workers of operating as spies for the United States. The Islamic militants intensified their attacks on vaccination teams after a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, was arrested on charges of running a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in the northwestern city of Abbottabad as a cover for a CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from a home where Osama bin Laden was later killed in a 2011 raid by U.S. Navy SEALs.

Pakistan is one of the three countries in the world where polio is endemic, and Taliban attacks have badly hampered vaccination campaigns. Some Pakistanis also are suspicious about the vaccination, fearing it will sterilize their children.

The bombing, which hit a police patrol close to the center, made the security forces the primary target, said police chief Shah, speaking at the scene of the bombing as rescuers rushed the wounded to hospital.

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