BAJAUR AGENCY/Hyderabad - Three Levies personnel were wounded in a bomb blast targeting a polio team in Bajaur Agency’s Khar tehsil on Tuesday, local residents and officials told The Nation.
Officials in the political administration said that the team was targeted while administering polio drops to children in the area.
According to officials, the incident occurred at around 8.30am in Janat Shah area, some 16km northwest of Khar, the headquarters of Bajaur Agency. They said that the Levies men were guarding the polio team when a bomb placed along the dry canal went off with a big bang.
The wounded Levies men were identified as Saeedullah, Shafiullah and Zahidullah.
Residents and Levies personnel of the nearby post reached the spot soon and shifted the injured to the agency headquarters hospital in Khar.
Following the blast, the personnel of Levies force along with security forces launched a hunt for the perpetrators in the surrounding areas but the administration did not confirm any arrest during the search operation.
However, the residents claimed that several local people were detained by the administration under the collective territorial responsibility clause of Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Fieldworkers and security forces involved in anti-polio drives in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have often been targeted by militants.
Meanwhile, unidentified people assaulted a polio vaccination team in Heerabad Qureshi area of southern Sindh city of Hyderabad on Tuesday after a disagreement by the family to get their children vaccinated.
The anti-polio team did not have a police escort with it. Following the incident, the vaccination campaign was suspended in the area.
Police officials said the incident was caused after male members of the family began arguing with a polio team that had administered vaccination drops to eligible children.
Polio officials Naveed, Kainat and Jannat claim they had the family's permission to administer the vaccine but were assaulted by the male members as they did not want their children to take the drops.
Following the incident, police arrived on scene but the attackers had left. However, police detained two people, reported to be brothers of the attackers, and are investigating the case after lodging a report on the complaint of the polio team.