At least five people were killed and 22 others suffered injuries in a bomb blast that targeted a police patrol in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan about 350 km southwest of Pakistan‘s capital Islamabad. The instance transpired in Tank Adda in the city near a police van.
A bomb blast targeting police killed five people in northwest Pakistan. The bomb exploded close to a police patrol in #DeraIsmailKhan city.#Pakistan #Blast #PakistanBlast pic.twitter.com/RAAxiGxA4v
— Ajeet Kumar (@Ajeet1994) November 3, 2023
According to police officer Mohammad Adnan, the device went off near a police patrol in Dera Ismail Khan city. He claimed that the target was a car transporting Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Elite Force officers. He stated that it was not immediately evident if a nearby bombing or a suicide strike caused the fatality. The deceased and injured have been moved to the Dera Ismail Khan District Headquarters Hospital.
Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar also expressed his sympathies to the bereaved families and vehemently denounced the explosion. He directed the appropriate authorities to provide the affected patients with the greatest possible medical care and declared that the fight against terrorism would go on until it was totally eliminated in the nation. He added, “Thanks to the sacrifices of the law enforcement agencies, we have been thwarting the evil intentions of terrorists.”
According to reports, there was heavy gunfire in the market close to Tank Ada (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) after the incident. The police did not disclose the nature of the explosion but they confirmed that rescue crews had arrived at the scene to begin relief work.
Terrorist activity in Pakistan has increased recently particularly in KP and Balochistan following the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan’s (TTP) termination of the cease-fire with the government in November of last year. Unknown gunmen opened fire on a police camp in Dera Ismail Khan on 31st October killing a policeman. Two troops lost their lives in an IED explosion in the South Waziristan district that same day.
At least 59 security officers were killed when terrorists detonated an explosive device in a packed mosque inside a well-guarded police facility in Peshawar earlier in January of this year. Later, the death toll rose to over 100.
At least 12 Pakistan Army personnel died in July during different military operations in Balochistan’s Zhob and Sui regions. It was the largest number of terrorist assault fatalities that the military has recorded in a single day this year. Prior to this in February 2022, ten troops perished in a “fire raid” in the Kech area of Balochistan.
A similar incident at a Shia mosque in the Kocha Risaldar neighbourhood of Peshawar last year claimed the lives of sixty-three individuals. The TTP, which was founded in 2007 as an umbrella organisation for various extremist groups, broke off talks with the federal government and ordered its fighters to carry out terrorist strikes all around the nation.
The group is believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda and has been held accountable for a number of lethal attacks in Pakistan which involved the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, strikes on military sites and a raid on army headquarters in 2009. At least 150 people, including 131 pupils, lost their lives when the Pakistani Taliban invaded the Army Public School (APS) in the northwest city of Peshawar in 2014. The attack was highly denounced and sent shockwaves around the globe.
According to information gathered last month by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), August witnessed the most number of terrorist assaults in a month in nearly nine years. There were 99 attacks nationwide, the most in a single month since November 2014, the study noted.
