AT LEAST five police officers were on Monday killed and dozens of others injured in a bomb blast that hit a polio protection team in northwestern Pakistan on Monday.
“A police truck transporting around 25 policemen for anti-polio campaign duties was targeted by an IED (improvised explosive device),” Anwar ul Haq, a senior government official in Bajaur district, told the news agency.
A report by Dawn citing rescue services said around 27 injured people were taken to the Bajaur district headquarters hospital. Dr Wazir Khan Safi, a medical superintendent in the district, as per the Dawn, said that 12 out of the 22 injured were being treated at the hospital, while 10 others seriously injured were sent to another medical facility in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Those seriously injured would be taken to Peshawar via a helicopter, said Malakand Division Commissioner Saqib Raza, adding that the area had been cordoned off. The ongoing polio campaign in the area has also been suspended due to the blast, he added.
In a statement, caretaker Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Arshad Hussain Shah condemned the blast and expressed his grief at the “martyrdom of police officials”. He has also directed the district administration to ensure that those wounded receive timely aid. The blast took place in Mamund in Bajaur district, an area which is around 14 kilometres away from Afghanistan and has witnessed a rise in attacks since the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021.
The Pakistani Taliban or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan later claimed responsibility for the attack that took place hours after authorities launched the first anti-polio campaign of this year. The militant group is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the only countries where polio – a debilitating virus which can cause lifelong disability – continues to be endemic, even though vaccines for the disease have been around for decades now.
Islamic militants often target polio teams and police assigned to protect them, claiming falsely that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. The opposition against the vaccines grew after the United States Central Intelligence Agency organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
By Desmond Nleya, Daily Times
