ISLAMABAD: At least three people were killed and 22 others were injured in a suicide attack on a convoy of a petroleum company in northwest Pakistan, police said, amid a surge in militant violence in the region.
The attacker, who was riding in an auto-rickshaw, targeted the convoy in Mir Ali area of North Waziristan district, the provincial police said in a statement.
“The suicide attack was carried out on a vehicle of Mari petroleum company,” the statement read.
“Seven FC (Frontier Constabulary) soldiers and 15 employees of the petroleum company were injured in the attack.”
The police statement did not specify whether the deceased were paramilitary FC soldiers or petroleum company staffers.
The Pakistani Taliban, or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a statement claimed responsibility for the attack in North Waziristan.
Pakistan’s northwestern and southwestern parts, which border Iran and Afghanistan, have seen an increase in militant attacks.
Last month, a suicide bombing killed more than 80 people and injured over 200 others at a mosque inside a heavily fortified police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The number of attacks against police and security forces increased particularly after the Pakistani Taliban called off a fragile, months-long truce with the government in November. The militant group, which maintains sanctuaries in neighboring Afghanistan, is separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
The group has waged an insurgency in Pakistan in the past 15 years, seeking stricter enforcement of Islamic laws, the release of its members in government custody and a reduction in the Pakistani military presence in areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province it has long used as its base.
