KARACHI: Three policemen were injured in a grenade attack on a police station in Pakistan’s commercial capital of Karachi, police said on Saturday, a day after a deadly bombing in the country’s northwest killed six people.
Karachi, which is home to over 15 million people, has a history of attacks on police by organized gangs involved in drug trafficking and land grabbing as well as by militant groups.
Mehzor Ali, a senior superintendent of police (SSP), said unidentified men lobbed a hand grenade incident the Preedy police station in Karachi’s Saddar business district at 12:16am on Saturday.
“No group has claimed responsibility for the attack,” he told reporters in Karachi. “Bomb disposal squad has been summoned and the incident is being investigated.”
The development came a day after a deadly bombing killed a top cleric among six people at a mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, according to officials.
The blast occurred during Friday prayers at Darul Uloom Haqqania, one of Pakistan’s largest and most influential religious seminaries.
Separately on Friday, nine people, including a paramilitary troop, were injured in a roadside blast in Quetta in the southwestern Balochistan province, police said.
No group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attacks either, but Pakistan has been battling twin insurgencies — one mounted by religiously motivated groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the country’s northwest and the other by ethnic Baloch separatists in Balochistan.
Three cops injured in grenade attack in Pakistan’s Karachi day after deadly bombing in northwest
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Three cops injured in grenade attack in Pakistan’s Karachi day after deadly bombing in northwest
- No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack on the police station in Karachi’s Saddar
- Pakistan, battling twin insurgencies, has witnessed a surge in militant violence in recent months
Pakistan says over 44.3 million children vaccinated as year’s first anti-polio drive concludes
- Pakistan launched this year’s first week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2, targeting over 45 million children
- Pakistan’s attempts to eliminate polio have been hindered in past by militant attacks targeting polio workers, security teams
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities have vaccinated over 44.3 million children during the week-long anti-polio nationwide campaign, the first of this year which concluded last week, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) said on Monday.
Pakistan launched the first anti-polio nationwide campaign on Feb. 2 to target over 45 million children. Over 400,000 trained polio workers took part in the door-to-door campaign to vaccinate children under the age of five against the disease, the government said.
“More than 44.3 million children were administered polio vaccine drops during the campaign,” the NEOC said in a statement.
The anti-polio campaign, which concluded on Sunday, saw over 22.9 million vaccinated in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province. In Sindh, over 10.5 million children were vaccinated, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 7.13 million, in Balochistan 2.36 million, in Islamabad over 455,000, in Gilgit-Baltistan over 261,000 and in Azad Kashmir over 673,000 in seven days, data shared by the NEOC said.
The center said that the campaign was conducted in Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously, the only two countries were the disease remains endemic.
Last year, Pakistan reported 31 polio cases, a significant drop from the alarming 74 cases reported in the country in 2024. The South Asian nation reported six cases in 2023 and only one in 2021, but saw a sharp resurgence in 2024.
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994, but efforts to eradicate the virus have been repeatedly undermined by vaccine misinformation and resistance from some religious hard-liners who claim that immunization is a foreign plot to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western espionage.
Militant groups have also frequently targeted polio vaccination teams and the security personnel assigned to protect them, often resulting in deadly attacks, particularly in KP and Balochistan.
“Polio workers and security personnel who performed duties during the campaign are the nation’s true heroes,” the NEOC said.
