PESHAWAR: Thirteen civilians and five soldiers were killed when suicide bombers drove two explosive-laden cars into an army compound in northwestern Pakistan, the military said on Wednesday.
Four children were among those killed in Tuesday’s attack, which involved four suicide bombers, with fighting raging into the early hours of Wednesday.
The attack took place in Bannu, a district in the turbulent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province close to Afghanistan and adjacent to the formerly self-governed tribal areas, once a hotbed for militancy.
“The terrorists entered Bannu Cantt from two different directions and, after an intense operation lasting several hours until this morning, all attackers were eliminated,” provincial minister Pakhtoon Yar Khan told AFP, adding that four children and three women were killed.
Plumes of grey smoke rose into the air after the two explosions, with gunfire heard throughout the night.
“In this intense exchange of fire, five brave soldiers, after putting up a heroic resistance, embraced martyrdom in the line of duty,” the military said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that 13 civilians were also killed.
The statement said 16 “terrorists,” including four suicide bombers, were killed, while a nearby mosque and residential area were severely damaged.
Thousands of people, including security officials, attended funerals for 12 of the civilians held at a sports complex in Bannu on Wednesday afternoon.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced the attackers as “cowardly terrorists who target innocent civilians during the holy month of Ramadan” and said they “deserve no mercy.”
The attack was claimed by a faction of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, which actively supported the Afghan Taliban in its war against the US-led NATO coalition between 2001 and 2021.
“The force of the explosion threw me several feet away... The explosion was so intense that it caused significant damage to the neighborhood,” Nadir Ali Shah, 40, told AFP from hospital as he received treatment for head and leg wounds.
“It was a scene of apocalyptic devastation.”
A police official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told AFP on Tuesday that “the blasts created two four-foot craters.”
The attack came days after a suicide bomber killed six people at an Islamic religious school in Pakistan attended by key Taliban leaders in the same province.
Violence has increased in Pakistan since the Taliban authorities returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Islamabad accuses Kabul’s rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil as they prepare to stage assaults on Pakistan, a charge the Taliban government denies.
The military said it has “unequivocally confirmed the physical involvement of Afghan nationals” in the attack, which they said was “orchestrated and directed” by militant leaders operating from Afghanistan.
“Pakistan expects the Interim Afghan Government to uphold its responsibilities and deny its soil for terrorist activities against Pakistan,” the statement said.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur carried out another attack on the same compound last July, detonating a car bomb against the boundary wall, killing eight Pakistani soldiers.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, home to 250 million people, with a surge in attacks that killed more than 1,600 people, according to Islamabad-based analysis group the Center for Research and Security Studies.
The violence is largely limited to Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan.
