PESHAWAR: A prayer leader was killed and five members of an anti-polio team, including two policemen, were injured in separate attacks in northwest Pakistan, police officials said on Saturday, days after three policemen were killed amid a renewed wave of militant violence in the region.
Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, which borders Afghanistan, has lately been witnessing a surge in militant attacks on police, security forces and civilians.
Saleem Kulachi, a police officer in KP’s Khyber tribal district, said the prayer leader, Abdul Nasir, came under attack by unidentified gunmen near a mosque in Bara area, the main town of the district bordering Afghanistan, late Friday.
“Our investigations into the incident are underway, but initial clues suggest that the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is most likely behind his killing,” he told Arab News.
The TTP, or the Pakistani Taliban, and Daesh have been locked in a “power struggle and tit-for-tat killings” in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region for the last couple of years, according to Irfanullah Khan, an analyst and expert on Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs. Both groups have targeted each other in a bid to wrest control of various areas.
“There is sort of a cold war between TTP and Daesh fighters, with both extremist groups having bitter rivalries,” he said. “There is growing fear among people about further turmoil in the northwestern part of the country.”
In the second incident, three anti-polio vaccinators and two policemen were injured after their vehicle came under attack by gunmen in the Dera Ismail Khan district, according to police.
KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur condemned the attack on the anti-polio team and directed health authorities to provide best medical care to the injured, his office said.
“These kinds of dastardly acts can’t demoralize the police force,” Gandapur was quoted as saying by his office. “The force will be equipped and provided all the required facilities to deal with the scourge of terrorism effectively.”
Earlier this week, three policemen were killed in separate attacks in the northwestern Pakistani province, amid fresh bout of violence in the militancy-hit region, according to police. The deaths brought the total number of police killings in ambushes and targeted attacks in KP to 59 this year.
While no group immediately claimed responsibility for the killings, officials suspected the TTP, which has claimed dozens of recent attacks, to be behind the latest killings.
Pakistan has witnessed a renewed surge in militant violence in its two western provinces, KP and Balochistan, since the TTP called off its fragile truce with the government in November 2022.
Last Wednesday, unidentified gunmen killed a police official providing security to a polio team in Peshawar, the capital of KP.
A senior police officer told Arab News last week that more than 200 of his colleagues had been killed in targeted attacks in the last two years.
Pakistan has blamed the surge in violence on militants operating out of neighboring Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegation and says rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue of Islamabad.
Prayer leader killed, policemen and anti-polio vaccinators injured in northwest Pakistan attacks
https://arab.news/pn35u
Prayer leader killed, policemen and anti-polio vaccinators injured in northwest Pakistan attacks
- The incidents come amid renewed wave of violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan
- Police suspect the Pakistani Taliban, allegedly at war with Daesh, to be behind the killing of the prayer leader
No casualties as blast derails Jaffar Express train in Pakistan’s south
- Passengers were stranded and railway staffers were clearing the track after blast, official says
- In March 2025, separatist militants hijacked the same train with hundreds of passengers aboard
QUETTA: A blast hit Jaffar Express and derailed four carriages of the passenger train in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday, officials said, with no casualties reported.
The blast occurred at the Abad railway station when the Peshawar-bound train was on its way to Sindh’s Sukkur city from Quetta, according to Pakistan Railways’ Quetta Division controller Muhammad Kashif.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, but passenger trains have often been targeted by Baloch separatist outfits in the restive Balochistan province that borders Sindh.
“Four bogies of the train were derailed due to the intensity of the explosion,” Kashif told Arab News. “No casualty was reported in the latest attack on passenger train.”
Another railway employee, who was aboard the train and requested anonymity, said the train was heading toward Sukkur from Jacobabad when they heard the powerful explosion, which derailed power van among four bogies.
“A small piece of the railway track has been destroyed,” he said, adding that passengers were now standing outside the train and railway staffers were busy clearing the track.
In March last year, fighters belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatist group had stormed Jaffar Express with hundreds of passengers on board and took them hostage. The military had rescued them after an hours-long operation that left 33 militants, 23 soldiers, three railway staff and five passengers dead.
The passenger train, which runs between Balochistan’s provincial capital of Quetta and Peshawar in the country’s northwest, had been targeted in at least four bomb attacks last year since the March hijacking, according to an Arab News tally.
Pakistan Railways says it has beefed up security arrangements for passenger trains in the province and increased the number of paramilitary troops on Jaffar Express since the hijacking in March, but militants have continued to target them in the restive region.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwestern province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, is the site of a decades-long insurgency waged by Baloch separatist groups who often attack security forces and foreigners, and kidnap government officials.
The separatists accuse the central government of stealing the region’s resources to fund development elsewhere in the country. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan.
