At least 28 dead, 40 hurt in suicide attack during Pakistan polls

At least 28 people have been killed after a blast in the Pakistani city of Quetta, as Pakistan goes to the polls.

Initial reports say at least 28 have been killed – including three police officers and two children – after the suicide attack outside a polling station.

Local media states another 35 people were injured in the blast.

A damaged police vehicle after the suicide attack on a polling booth today.

Twitter/Shazadi Baloch

“(The bomber) was trying to enter the polling station. When police tried to stop him he blew himself up,” a local administration official in Quetta, Hashim Ghilzai, told AFP.

The incident and toll were confirmed by a second senior local official.

Pakistan’s election has been marred by violence and polls opened today following repeated attacks on civilians and political candidates.

The vote is meant to be a rare democratic transition of power in the nuclear-armed country which has been ruled by the powerful military for roughly half its history.

Pakistani election officials receive ballot boxes and voting materials at a distribution centre in Peshawar on July 24, 2018.

But it has been dubbed Pakistan’s “dirtiest election” due to widespread accusations of pre-poll rigging by the armed forces, with Khan believed to be the beneficiary.

The contest has largely boiled down to a two-way race between Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of ousted premier Nawaz Sharif, whose brother Shahbaz is leading the campaign.

The first voter to enter a polling station in the eastern city of Lahore was a woman, business executive Maryum Arif, who told AFP she planned to vote for the PML-N as “it has served Pakistan”.

Pakistani election staff prepare election material ahead of voting.

AAP

She was followed shortly after by Shahbaz Sharif, who called on Pakistanis to “get out of their homes and … change the fate of Pakistan” before casting his own vote and flashing a victory sign.

The election day suicide bombing is just the latest in a string of deadly attacks.

Up to 800,000 police and military forces have been stationed at more than 85,000 polling stations across the country, with concerns for security after a string of bloody militant attacks in the final weeks of the campaign that have killed more than 200 people, including three candidates.

Earlier, one policeman was killed and three wounded in a hand grenade attack on a polling station in southwestern Balochistan, Pakistan’s poorest and most restive province, local police there told AFP.

No group has yet claimed the attack, but Balochistan suffers from Islamist and separatists insurgencies and was the scene of several campaign bombings, including a devastating attack claimed by the Islamic State group which killed 153 people this month.

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SBS