PESHAWAR: The deputy commissioner of Peshawar has for three days imposed an emergency law known as Section 144 which prohibits gatherings in the northwestern city over what he said were "credible reports" of security threats by militants.
The move comes days after near-simultaneous attacks late Thursday night in Lakki Marwat, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, triggering shootouts that killed three soldiers and seven militants. Last Monday two explosions at a counter-terrorism ammunition depot in northwest Pakistan also killed at least 13 people and wounded over 50.
The northwestern tribal region has long been home to militants, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a war on the state in a bid to overthrow the government and replace it with their own harsh system of Islamic law. In one of the worst attacks in decades, a suicide bomber reached a mosque inside a highly fortified compound in Peshawar and killed around 100 people, most of them cops, earlier this year.
“There is credible information that non-state actors and miscreants are planning to sabotage the general law and order and peaceful atmosphere in District Peshawar and to prevent breach of peace, it is imperative to take extraordinary measures in greater public interest,” the deputy commissioner said in a letter dated April 30 but widely released to media on Monday.
Due to fears of militant attacks, the letter said, a ban was being imposed on “unlawful, unauthorized gathering/assembly of more than five persons within the premises of District Peshawar.”
The ban, applicable with immediate effect, will remain in place for three days, the notice said.
The TTP are a separate group but allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO troops pulled out of the war-torn nation.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up attacks in recent months.