Militants kill five Pakistani troops near Afghan border

ISLAMABAD: Five Pakistani security personnel have been killed in a militant attack near the border with Afghanistan, the military said on Saturday.
The attack took place in the Spinwam area of North Waziristan, in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military’s media wing, ISPR, said in a statement. The five security personnel killed were four Frontier Corps soldiers a Levies subinspector.
“Terrorists targeted security forces vehicle in Spinwam, North Waziristan,” the ISPR said. “Clearance operation is in progress to eliminate any terrorist found in the area.”
Earlier in the day, the attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but the ISPR did not confirm it.
The militant group, which is a separate entity from the Afghan Taliban, has carried out numerous past attacks in Pakistan, including the 2014 deadly attack on a Peshawar school that killed 154 people, mostly schoolchildren, and an attack on Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai.
Last month, President Arif Alvi and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced the government was willing to offer amnesty to TTP members if they renounced violence and adhered to the country’s constitution, but the group it was proud of its “struggle” and was not seeking forgiveness from anyone.
North Waziristan served as a headquarters for local and foreign militants in the 2000s, until 2017, when the Pakistani army completed several operations in the mountainous region.
Recently, attacks in the area have been on the rise, targeting mainly security forces.