In continuing attacks on polio teams, six policemen on security detail were among the seven killed on Wednesday in an explosion in Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
News reports said a 13 -year- old boy was also killed when the police vehicle was targeted. On Tuesday, three polio workers were shot dead in Karachi leading to the suspension of the anti-polio drive in the city.
Pakistan, one of the three polio endemic countries, reported 91 cases in 2013.
The policemen were headed out to provide security for polio teams when the improvised explosive device reported to be placed on a bicycle went off. Nine persons were injured in the attack at Sardheri Bazar in Charsadda.
A polio team vehicle in Bhakkar district in Punjab also came under fire injuring two persons. Official sources said that from 2012 onwards 33 polio workers were killed including 11 security personnel and nine injured in attacks.
The attacks on polio teams began on July 17, 2012 in Gadap Town, Karachi during a polio drive when a doctor attached to the World Health Organisation was injured when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle. His driver too was hurt in the attack. The next day, on the second day of the immunization programme, a polio worker Ishaq was shot dead in the same area. In Quetta in October 2012, one worker was killed during a campaign in the Alizai town.
In four incidents in Karachi in December 2012, three in one day, five persons including four women, two of them in charge of the area programme were killed, and two injured in attacks. In January this year, in Korangi Town in Karachi three persons including two women were shot dead and one injured in firing.
Security police accompanying the teams were killed in Swabi, Mardan and Bajaur and Peshawar last year while a bomb blast killed two policemen in Suleman Khel area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Militants also attacked the Mattani civil hospital last year and killed one person during polio vaccination. There have been seven attacks in Karachi of the 25 reported incidents and 13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in Peshawar and Swabi. Balochistan reported two attacks and the Federally Administered Tribal areas accounted for three incidents.
In addition in Swabi, on January 2, seven NGO workers who were associated with the polio campaign in the past were killed.
The latest attack comes after Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan remained strongly committed to polio eradication. On Tuesday President Mamnoon Hussain chaired a meeting on Polio Eradication and called on all stakeholders to take part in the Nationwide Polio Campaign for 2014 that began on Monday.
Ms. Ayesha Raza Farooq, the Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio Eradication told the meeting that more than 34 million children were going to be vaccinated across the country during the campaign and over 200,000 workers and supervisors were involved in the immunization drive. She said that Polio Control Rooms have been established at district, provincial and federal levels to closely monitor daily progress of the campaign.
Six polio security police killed in Charsadda blast - The Hindu
Six Pakistani police officers are shot dead protecting Spanish cyclist
Six police officers in Pakistan have been killed while fending off a kidnap attempt against a Spanish adventurer attempting to cycle through one of the most dangerous parts of the country.
Javier Colorado, a 27-year-old adventurer on a round-the-world bicycle trip, was travelling with an escort of paramilitary police guards towards Quetta, the provincial capital of insurgency-racked Baluchistan province.
Local officials said six members of the Levies – as the tribal police force is known – had been killed in an exchange of fire while another five were injured.
"Armed men opened indiscriminate firing and wanted to kidnap the foreigner," a local Levies official said.
Colorado was also taken to hospital with a bullet wound, police said. The Spanish foreign ministry said he was released later on Wednesday.
He had been given a police guard after crossing on Tuesday from Iran into Baluchistan, one of Pakistan's most volatile provinces – focus of attacks by separatist rebels and some of the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan as well as being home to many Taliban militants who use it as a base for attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.
A foreign tourist would be a valuable prize for any of those groups, as well as for bandits simply motivated by the prospect of a large ransom.
Pakistanis reacted with astonishment that a foreigner was travelling through the area, not least as the attempted kidnapping took place in Mastung, the same district where a bomb attack on a bus carrying Shia pilgrims from Iran had killed 24 people the previous day.
The incident had prevented Colorado from travelling on towards Quetta on Tuesday.
A message on Colorado's Facebook page posted by relatives said his family "would like to give our appreciation for the attention given by the Spanish consulate in Pakistan".
However, it suggested he would give the rest of Pakistan a miss.
"We received a call from the embassy that Javier is well and uninjured. Today he will take a flight to Lahore, next to the Indian border," the message said. "His intentions right now are to continue his journey."
His attempt to cycle around the world began on 1 October when he left Madrid on a journey that took him east through Europe, Turkey and Iran.
A profile of Colorado by a Spanish cycling magazine calls him a person who loves to "overcome his fears and test the limits of his abilities".
In March 2013 two female Czech travellers were kidnapped as they travelled through the province. They remain missing but appeared in a video pleading for their freedom in October.
Elsewhere on Wednesday three Germans were reported to be among the dead killed by major air strikes in North Waziristan.
The Pakistani army said the strikes, ordered in retaliation for the killing of 20 troops in a truck bombing incident on Sunday, had killed 40 militants, including the three Germans and large numbers of Uzbeks.
The military assault on militant positions in the troubled district bordering Afghanistan is seen as highly significant.
The army has been itching to mount operations in the area but has been held back by the government, which hopes to negotiate a peaceful end to the bloody conflict with militant groups which claimed almost 2,500 lives last year.
Also in the north-west, six police officers and a teenage boy were killed by a bomb hidden in a parked motorbike in Charsadda district. The officers were on their way to guard health workers attempting to administer polio vaccines to children.
Pakistan's stalling efforts to stamp out polio have suffered from a spate of lethal attacks on vaccinators, which have prompted some health workers to go on strike.
Six Pakistani police officers are shot dead protecting Spanish cyclist | World news | theguardian.com
22 die as bomber hits pilgrims’ bus in Mastung
Muhammad Ejaz KhanWednesday, January 22, 2014
From Print Edition
QUETTA: Twenty-two people were killed and 31 others sustained injuries in a suicide blast on a bus of Shia pilgrims in the Daringar area of Mastung district, 60 kilometres from the provincial capital, on Tuesday.
“Twenty-two bodies have been retrieved from the wreckage of the passenger bus,” officials of the district administration told The News. The deceased belonged to Quetta’s Hazara town and Marriabad.
Officials of the Mastung administration said three passenger buses, escorted by Levies force, were heading to Quetta from the Pak-Iran border at Taftan carrying 45 to 53 pilgrims in each bus.
When the convoy reached the Daringar area, it was targeted by a powerful explosion. The explosion was so huge that one bus was destroyed completely and the other two buses were also damaged.
Preliminary investigation of the incident revealed that a car loaded with explosives was parked in Daringar on the Quetta-Taftan Highway, and the explosives were triggered when the convoy carrying the pilgrims approached the site at around 6:15pm.
“People travelling in the other two buses took out the injured and shifted them to hospital in private vehicles,” officials said. Human body parts and flesh were scattered all over the place after the blast.
Moving scenes were witnessed at the spot and hospital when the people learnt about the blast and reached there. The hospital sources said the death toll could increase as some of the injured were in critical condition.
The district administration and Levies force also reached the spot and cordoned off the area, as officials of the bomb disposal squad were collecting and examining the site. Around 100 kilograms of explosive material was used in the bomb explosion, official sources said.
Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch strongly condemned the explosion and expressed deep grief over the human loss. The chief minister observed that it was the worst kind of terrorism and directed to submit report of the incident.
Meanwhile, the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and others also strongly condemned the attack. The HDP gave shutter down strike call for today (Wednesday) in Quetta to condemn the attack.
Our correspondent/agencies add: President Mamnoon Hussain, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, PPP patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak strongly condemned the blast targeting the bus of pilgrims in Mustung.
In their separate messages, they expressed heartfelt sympathies with the bereaved families and prayed for eternal peace of the departed souls.
They also called upon the concerned authorities to ensure that best medical assistance was provided to the injured.The chief of the Tehreek Nafaz Fiqah-e-Jafariya Quaid-e-Millat Jafariya Agha Syed Hamid Ali Shah Moosavi also condemned the bomb blast near the pilgrims bus in Mastung.In a statement, he said the Balochistan government had been repeatedly asked to provide protection to the Zaireen. He demanded an immediate search operation for the terrorists.
22 die as bomber hits pilgrims’ bus in Mastung - thenews.com.pk
R.I.P
News reports said a 13 -year- old boy was also killed when the police vehicle was targeted. On Tuesday, three polio workers were shot dead in Karachi leading to the suspension of the anti-polio drive in the city.
Pakistan, one of the three polio endemic countries, reported 91 cases in 2013.
The policemen were headed out to provide security for polio teams when the improvised explosive device reported to be placed on a bicycle went off. Nine persons were injured in the attack at Sardheri Bazar in Charsadda.
A polio team vehicle in Bhakkar district in Punjab also came under fire injuring two persons. Official sources said that from 2012 onwards 33 polio workers were killed including 11 security personnel and nine injured in attacks.
The attacks on polio teams began on July 17, 2012 in Gadap Town, Karachi during a polio drive when a doctor attached to the World Health Organisation was injured when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle. His driver too was hurt in the attack. The next day, on the second day of the immunization programme, a polio worker Ishaq was shot dead in the same area. In Quetta in October 2012, one worker was killed during a campaign in the Alizai town.
In four incidents in Karachi in December 2012, three in one day, five persons including four women, two of them in charge of the area programme were killed, and two injured in attacks. In January this year, in Korangi Town in Karachi three persons including two women were shot dead and one injured in firing.
Security police accompanying the teams were killed in Swabi, Mardan and Bajaur and Peshawar last year while a bomb blast killed two policemen in Suleman Khel area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Militants also attacked the Mattani civil hospital last year and killed one person during polio vaccination. There have been seven attacks in Karachi of the 25 reported incidents and 13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in Peshawar and Swabi. Balochistan reported two attacks and the Federally Administered Tribal areas accounted for three incidents.
In addition in Swabi, on January 2, seven NGO workers who were associated with the polio campaign in the past were killed.
The latest attack comes after Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan remained strongly committed to polio eradication. On Tuesday President Mamnoon Hussain chaired a meeting on Polio Eradication and called on all stakeholders to take part in the Nationwide Polio Campaign for 2014 that began on Monday.
Ms. Ayesha Raza Farooq, the Prime Minister’s Focal Person on Polio Eradication told the meeting that more than 34 million children were going to be vaccinated across the country during the campaign and over 200,000 workers and supervisors were involved in the immunization drive. She said that Polio Control Rooms have been established at district, provincial and federal levels to closely monitor daily progress of the campaign.
Six polio security police killed in Charsadda blast - The Hindu
Six Pakistani police officers are shot dead protecting Spanish cyclist
Six police officers in Pakistan have been killed while fending off a kidnap attempt against a Spanish adventurer attempting to cycle through one of the most dangerous parts of the country.
Javier Colorado, a 27-year-old adventurer on a round-the-world bicycle trip, was travelling with an escort of paramilitary police guards towards Quetta, the provincial capital of insurgency-racked Baluchistan province.
Local officials said six members of the Levies – as the tribal police force is known – had been killed in an exchange of fire while another five were injured.
"Armed men opened indiscriminate firing and wanted to kidnap the foreigner," a local Levies official said.
Colorado was also taken to hospital with a bullet wound, police said. The Spanish foreign ministry said he was released later on Wednesday.
He had been given a police guard after crossing on Tuesday from Iran into Baluchistan, one of Pakistan's most volatile provinces – focus of attacks by separatist rebels and some of the worst sectarian violence in Pakistan as well as being home to many Taliban militants who use it as a base for attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.
A foreign tourist would be a valuable prize for any of those groups, as well as for bandits simply motivated by the prospect of a large ransom.
Pakistanis reacted with astonishment that a foreigner was travelling through the area, not least as the attempted kidnapping took place in Mastung, the same district where a bomb attack on a bus carrying Shia pilgrims from Iran had killed 24 people the previous day.
The incident had prevented Colorado from travelling on towards Quetta on Tuesday.
A message on Colorado's Facebook page posted by relatives said his family "would like to give our appreciation for the attention given by the Spanish consulate in Pakistan".
However, it suggested he would give the rest of Pakistan a miss.
"We received a call from the embassy that Javier is well and uninjured. Today he will take a flight to Lahore, next to the Indian border," the message said. "His intentions right now are to continue his journey."
His attempt to cycle around the world began on 1 October when he left Madrid on a journey that took him east through Europe, Turkey and Iran.
A profile of Colorado by a Spanish cycling magazine calls him a person who loves to "overcome his fears and test the limits of his abilities".
In March 2013 two female Czech travellers were kidnapped as they travelled through the province. They remain missing but appeared in a video pleading for their freedom in October.
Elsewhere on Wednesday three Germans were reported to be among the dead killed by major air strikes in North Waziristan.
The Pakistani army said the strikes, ordered in retaliation for the killing of 20 troops in a truck bombing incident on Sunday, had killed 40 militants, including the three Germans and large numbers of Uzbeks.
The military assault on militant positions in the troubled district bordering Afghanistan is seen as highly significant.
The army has been itching to mount operations in the area but has been held back by the government, which hopes to negotiate a peaceful end to the bloody conflict with militant groups which claimed almost 2,500 lives last year.
Also in the north-west, six police officers and a teenage boy were killed by a bomb hidden in a parked motorbike in Charsadda district. The officers were on their way to guard health workers attempting to administer polio vaccines to children.
Pakistan's stalling efforts to stamp out polio have suffered from a spate of lethal attacks on vaccinators, which have prompted some health workers to go on strike.
Six Pakistani police officers are shot dead protecting Spanish cyclist | World news | theguardian.com
22 die as bomber hits pilgrims’ bus in Mastung
Muhammad Ejaz KhanWednesday, January 22, 2014
From Print Edition
QUETTA: Twenty-two people were killed and 31 others sustained injuries in a suicide blast on a bus of Shia pilgrims in the Daringar area of Mastung district, 60 kilometres from the provincial capital, on Tuesday.
“Twenty-two bodies have been retrieved from the wreckage of the passenger bus,” officials of the district administration told The News. The deceased belonged to Quetta’s Hazara town and Marriabad.
Officials of the Mastung administration said three passenger buses, escorted by Levies force, were heading to Quetta from the Pak-Iran border at Taftan carrying 45 to 53 pilgrims in each bus.
When the convoy reached the Daringar area, it was targeted by a powerful explosion. The explosion was so huge that one bus was destroyed completely and the other two buses were also damaged.
Preliminary investigation of the incident revealed that a car loaded with explosives was parked in Daringar on the Quetta-Taftan Highway, and the explosives were triggered when the convoy carrying the pilgrims approached the site at around 6:15pm.
“People travelling in the other two buses took out the injured and shifted them to hospital in private vehicles,” officials said. Human body parts and flesh were scattered all over the place after the blast.
Moving scenes were witnessed at the spot and hospital when the people learnt about the blast and reached there. The hospital sources said the death toll could increase as some of the injured were in critical condition.
The district administration and Levies force also reached the spot and cordoned off the area, as officials of the bomb disposal squad were collecting and examining the site. Around 100 kilograms of explosive material was used in the bomb explosion, official sources said.
Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch strongly condemned the explosion and expressed deep grief over the human loss. The chief minister observed that it was the worst kind of terrorism and directed to submit report of the incident.
Meanwhile, the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and others also strongly condemned the attack. The HDP gave shutter down strike call for today (Wednesday) in Quetta to condemn the attack.
Our correspondent/agencies add: President Mamnoon Hussain, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, PPP patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak strongly condemned the blast targeting the bus of pilgrims in Mustung.
In their separate messages, they expressed heartfelt sympathies with the bereaved families and prayed for eternal peace of the departed souls.
They also called upon the concerned authorities to ensure that best medical assistance was provided to the injured.The chief of the Tehreek Nafaz Fiqah-e-Jafariya Quaid-e-Millat Jafariya Agha Syed Hamid Ali Shah Moosavi also condemned the bomb blast near the pilgrims bus in Mastung.In a statement, he said the Balochistan government had been repeatedly asked to provide protection to the Zaireen. He demanded an immediate search operation for the terrorists.
22 die as bomber hits pilgrims’ bus in Mastung - thenews.com.pk
R.I.P
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