PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen shot dead two traffic police officers in Pakistan’s northwestern district of Lakki Marwat on Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks in a region with a long history of militant violence, according to an official statement.
The officers were ambushed on Longkhel Road near Gulbaz Dehqan village while they were en route to duty.
No group has claimed responsibility, but similar shootings in the past have frequently been carried out by militants from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which remains active in the area.
“We share the grief of the bereaved families,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur said in a statement, confirming that two traffic police officers had been killed “after unidentified assailants opened fire on them.”
“The families of the martyrs will not be left alone and will be fully supported,” he added while directing law enforcement agencies to arrest those responsible without delay.
Lakki Marwat, located near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, has witnessed repeated assaults on police along with other government functionaries and residents in recent years.
In 2022, six officers were killed in a TTP-claimed ambush, and in 2023, a police station was attacked with guns and explosives, killing four.
The district was also the site of one of Pakistan’s deadliest militant attacks in 2010, when a suicide bomber targeted a volleyball match, killing over 100 people.
Authorities in the area have struggled to maintain security amid a resurgence of insurgent violence I recent years.
