Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claims responsibility for attack that targeted officers deployed to protect polio vaccination campaign workers.

The attack came two days after TTP announced an end to a ceasefire agreed with the government in June [File: Arshad Butt/AP Photo]4
Islamabad, Pakistan 
A suicide blast hit a police vehicle in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, killing at least one officer and two civilians and injuring dozens, according to police.

The armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban West Pakistan (TTP), additionally called the Religious Movement of Pakistan, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, 2 days after it enforced a ceasefire associated with the government in the Gregorian calendar month.
Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Quetta Ghulam Azfar Mahesar told reporters that the vehicle that was targeted was carrying security personnel deployed to protect workers of an acute polio vaccination campaign in the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Mahesar said the incident in Buleli district injured at least twenty-four people, twenty of whom are police officers. He claimed that 2 alternative vehicles were additionally smashed in the attack.

Javed Akhtar, an officer at the government hospital in Quetta, told Al Jazeera that a four-year-old woman and a girl were among the civilian casualties recently.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the blast and expressed grief over the deaths of civilians and a police official.




Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah additionally issued a press statement condemning the attack and calling for a thorough investigation into the incident.

Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo vowed to counter the "cowardly act". "All those involved in this incident and their facilitators are brought under the law," he said.

The TTP later issued a press release claiming responsibility for the attack.
“This attack was carried out as soon as the end of the ceasefire was announced and was planned to exact revenge for the death of Omar Khalid Khorasani. Our attacks may continue,” it said.




Earlier this month, the group targeted another police vehicle in the town of Lakki Marwat in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, during which six police officers were killed.

Polio vaccination groups in West Pakistan were commonly targeted by armed attackers. Over the past decade, nearly a hundred people associated with the protectionist campaign have been killed across the country.

There have been at least 5 attacks on acute frontal polio groups this year, the most recent of which occurred in October when unknown assailants shot and killed a policeman providing protection to an acute polio vaccination doctor in Pishin, Balochistan.

The attacks come amid a surge in cases of acute anterior poliomyelitis in West Pakistan, the only country outside Asia where the disabling neurodegenerative disease is endemic.




Moreover, the attack in Quetta came as the England cricket team travels to West Pakistan to play their first glimpse of the series in seventeen years. the primary match of the three-Test series can begin on a weekday in Rawalpindi.