- 4 minutes ago
- From the section Asia
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At least 14 people have been killed in a blast outside a polio vaccination centre in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta, officials say.
Many of the casualties are thought to have been police guarding the clinic.Armed guards are routine for polio workers in Pakistan, who have been the target of many deadly attacks by Islamist militants in recent years.
Militants oppose polio vaccination, saying it is a Western conspiracy to sterilise Pakistani children.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where the disease is still endemic.
The explosion took place in the morning around the time workers report for duty before heading out on their vaccination rounds, Sarfaraz Bugti, a minister for Balochistan province where the blast took place, told reporters. Around 20 people were injured.
"We are living in a warzone and I can't say anything about the nature of the blast," Mr Bugti is quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
Correspondents say the number of attacks on polio teams in Pakistan declined last year, compared with 2014 which saw several deadly assaults.
In that year, Pakistan recorded its highest number of polio cases since 1999. Health officials blamed the spike in cases on the attacks on immunisation teams.
Most of those new infections were in the north-western tribal region of Pakistan where militants regularly targeted roving health teams.
The last attack on a polio target in Pakistan is thought to have taken place in north-western Swabi district in November 2015, when the local polio co-ordinator was shot dead by unidentified gunmen.
This latest blast took place in Quetta, capital of south-western Balochistan province, which has also seen sporadic attacks on polio teams.
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