Blast targeting polio team kills police official near Peshawar

Police officials confirmed the deployment was for the protection of polio workers

PESHAWAR: A police constable deployed for the protection of polio eradication teams was killed in an IED blast on the outskirts of Peshawar on Tuesday.



According to the station house officer of the Daudzai police station, the Superintendent of Police was near the Muslim Children Academy school inspecting security measures when the bomb went off.

Police officials confirmed that the deployment was for the protection of polio workers, whose lives are under consistent threat.

A spokesperson for the Lady Reading Hospital said that the injured constable had succumbed to injuries on his way to the hospital.



In September, at least four policemen and five civilians were injured when a roadside bomb exploded near a police van guarding a polio team in Charsadda.

The blast occurred on the opening day of the country’s week-long anti-polio campaign.

District police officer Charsadda Sohail Khalid told The Express Tribune that policemen were patrolling the area when an improvised explosive device, kept in a pressure cooker, went off, injuring nine people, including the station house officer.



Some eight kilogrammes of explosives were used in the blast, according to the bomb disposal squad.

Attacks on polio teams are frequently carried out by militant groups. Opposition to all forms of inoculation grew after the CIA organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down al Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Despite the attacks, the country hopes to be removed from the list of polio-endemic countries by 2018 by achieving its goal of no fresh cases for a year.