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Pakistan suicide blast targeting police kills 3, wounds 28

The explosion, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban militant group, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, came after the group ended a ceasefire with the government.

Reuters
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A security official stands guard at the site of a suicide bomb attack targeting a police truck in Quetta on Nov 30. Photo: AFP
A security official stands guard at the site of a suicide bomb attack targeting a police truck in Quetta on Nov 30. Photo: AFP

A suicide bomb blast in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta targeted a police patrol on Wednesday, killing three people and wounding 28, police said.

The explosion, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban militant group, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in a text message to Reuters, came after the group ended a ceasefire with the government this week.

"A bomb blast that targeted a police patrol wounded more than 30 people, including 15 police," a police official, Abdul Haq, told Reuters. "Out of them, a policeman, a woman and a child died."

The patrol had been guarding a polio vaccination team at the time of the suicide blast, he added.

Islamist militants in Pakistan often target polio vaccination teams, in the belief that the immunisation effort is a Western tool to spy on them.

Quetta is the capital of Pakistan's province of Balochistan bordering Afghanistan and Iran, where both Islamist and separatist insurgents operate.