ISLAMABAD: Two people were killed and three others were injured on Sunday evening when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast took place in the northwestern city of Lakki Marwat, state media reported.
The explosive device went off in Lakki Marwat’s Awjagai area, the state-run Radio Pakistan said in a report.
“According to police, the injured have been shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital Lakki Marwat,” Radio Pakistan said, adding that police had launched a search operation in the area to arrest the culprits.
The incident takes place a day after Pakistani security forces killed nine militants on Saturday who stormed a training air base in the eastern Pakistani district of Mianwali. The Pakistani military said “no damage” had been done to any functional operational assets at the airfield.
On Friday, 21 people, including 15 security personnel, were killed in three separate attacks in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces that border Afghanistan.
The South Asian country has been witnessing an uptick in militant attacks, particularly after the Pakistan Taliban called off their fragile truce with the government in November 2022, with a majority of these incidents targeting the two provinces along the Afghan border.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly asserted that militants targeting their country operate from neighboring Afghanistan, urging the Taliban government in Kabul to prevent their territory from being used as a staging ground for such attacks.
Pakistan last month asked all illegal immigrants, mostly Afghan nationals, to leave the country by November 1, saying they were involved in attacks, smuggling and other offenses.
The expulsion order followed suicide bombings in Pakistan this year that the government said involved Afghan nationals, though it did not provide any evidence.
