PESHAWAR: Three security personnel were killed by unidentified gunmen in northwestern Pakistan in the last two days, police said on Monday, while a doctor was shot dead and a snooker club set on fire.
Islamabad blames an ongoing surge in militant attacks on neighboring Afghanistan, saying Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, leaders have taken refuge there and run camps to train insurgents to launch attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban rulers in Kabul say rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad and it does not allow militants to operate on its territory.
The TTP pledges allegiance to, and gets its name from, the Afghan Taliban, but is not directly a part of the group. Its stated aim is to impose Islamic religious law in Pakistan, as the Taliban have done in Afghanistan.
Police officer Naheed Khan said on Monday “well-armed” militants mounted an overnight attack on the Takhta Baig check post in the northwestern Khyber district, leaving a Frontier Constabulary (FC) paramilitary soldier and a police official dead.
“The security personnel deputed on the check post repulsed the attack after an intense exchange of fire, forcing the militants to flee,” he added.
In a separate incident, Rohanzeb Khan, District Police Officer (DPO) in the North Waziristan district, said unidentified gunmen shot dead a police officer of the Special Branch department late on Sunday night.
“Masked gunmen riding two motorbikes shot dead a police officer of the Special Branch in Eidak, a town on the outskirts of Miran Shah, the headquarters of the [North Waziristan] district,” Khan said.
Dr. Abdul Rasheed, who worked at the District Hospital Khar in the Bajaur tribal district, was separately gunned down by unidentified gunmen on Sunday, police said.
“The incident of the doctor’s killing took place in Mohmand,” police officer Ajab Khan told Arab News.
In the Sultankhel Market of Khyber district, police said on Monday a snooker club was set on fire and a warning note left that it should not be rebuilt. The club had been built by journalist Khalil Jibran who was gunned down by unidentified gunmen last month.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the latest violence, officials widely suspect the TTP.
Attacks against security targets and the assassination of police and government officials have been on the rise in recent months in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, with most assaults claimed by the TTP.
Last week, unidentified gunmen abducted 13 laborers in the northwestern district of Tank but released nine, police said. Separately last month, two soldiers from Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps were killed in clashes between security forces and militants who had allegedly infiltrated from neighboring Afghanistan into Pakistan’s northwestern border regions.
Pakistani forces were able to effectively dismantle the TTP and kill most of its top leadership in a string of military operations from 2014 onwards in the tribal areas, driving most of the fighters into neighboring Afghanistan, where Islamabad says they have regrouped. Kabul denies this.
Last month, the federal government announced it would launch a new counter-terrorism operation, Azm-e-Istehkam, but the campaign has so far been opposed by opposition parties.
