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Bombs kill 11 Pakistan police guarding polio teams
Two bombs minutes apart struck tribal police assigned to guard polio workers in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing 11, police said
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wo bombs minutes apart struck tribal police assigned to guard polio workers in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing 11, police said.
Police official Nawabzada Khan said no one was killed, but six officers were wounded, when the first bomb struck an escort vehicle in the Lashora village of Jamrud tribal region in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Khan said minutes later, another roadside bomb struck a convoy of tribal police officers dispatched there to transport victims of the first attack, killing 11 officers and wounding six. He said gunmen also opened fire on officers, triggering a shootout that was still going on.
A government administrator Nasir Khan said they had launched a massive hunt in effort to trace and arrest the attackers. He confirmed 11 deaths and 12 injuries.
No one claimed responsibility for the two separate bombings, but anti-polio teams or their guards have been frequently targeted in Pakistan by Islamic militants, who say the campaigns are a tool for spying and claim the vaccine makes boys sterile.
Pakistan is one of the few remaining countries where polio persists. In most cases the disease is found in the northwest, where militants make it difficult to reach children for vaccination.
