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ISLAMABAD: At least three cops were killed and six injured Thursday after nearly a dozen militants stormed a police check post at Karak district in Pakistan’s restive northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, officials said.
Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion is likely to fall on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has frequently targeted police and security personnel in the province.
“The terrorists opened fire from all sides at the check post in Karak’s Bahadur Khel area, targeting police personnel using light and heavy weapons in an attempt to capture it. Policemen at the checkpost offered stiff resistance in an encounter which lasted two hours, following which the terrorists fled,” the provincial police said in a statement.
Pakistan has experienced an escalation in militancy in KP, adjacent to Afghanistan, following the collapse of a tenuous truce between TTP and the state in Nov 2022.
Pakistani authorities have linked the surge in militant violence to cross-border incursions from Afghanistan, alleging that the Kabul administration is facilitating TTP fighters, a claim Afghan authorities refute. Most of these assaults have been directed at security and law-enforcement personnel, although civilians and govt officials have also been impacted.
In KP’s Dera Ismail Khan district last week, four soldiers were killed by gunfire and an improvised explosive device (IED) unleashed by terrorists.
In Balochistan, another restive province in Pakistan’s south, 18 soldiers were killed in an attack by terrorists earlier this month.
Islamabad think-tank Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) has described 2024 as the most lethal year for security forces in a decade, with a minimum of 685 military and police fatalities resulting from 444 terror attacks.
Alongside such attacks, militants have stepped up targeted killings and kidnappings of officials in KP and Balochistan.
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