Pakistan: Blast kills 6 policemen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, TTP claims responsibility

The latest in a string of strikes by Islamist extremists ahead of the national elections on February 8, an explosion in northwest Pakistan, close to the Afghan border, on Monday left six police officers serving as polio vaccination guards dead and more than twenty injured. In a statement to the media, the Pakistan Taliban, an umbrella organization of militants also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack. According to police official Kashif Zulfikar, the explosion struck a truck carrying police officers who were en route to oversee a polio vaccination campaign in the Bajaur tribal district. Islamist terrorists in Pakistan often target polio vaccination teams as they believe that the immunisation effort is a Western ploy to spy on them and make Muslims infertile - a belief widely held in a significant section of the society in the troubled South Asian country. For years, the TTP has been fighting the state, aiming to topple the current administration and install a strict form of Islamic law in its stead. Since they terminated a ceasefire with the government last year, the militants have increased the intensity of their attacks. Concern has been expressed by political analysts, and some northwest lawmakers have even called for a postponement of the elections. At least 23 soldiers were killed last month when a six-man suicide squad crashed an explosives-laden truck into a military barracks in northwest Pakistan, the highest number of casualties from a single attack in years. (With agency inputs)