PESHAWAR (AP) – Militants attacked a police headquarters and two military posts in northwest Pakistan, triggering firefights that killed five security personnel and five insurgents, police and the military said.
The attacks came three days after a suicide bomber in the same region rammed his car into a police station’s main gate and five others opened fire, killing 23 officers in this year’s worst attack on Pakistani security forces.
The military and local police chief Iftikhar Shah said three police officers were martyred and three others were wounded in an attack on the police headquarters in the town of Tank in Dera Ismail Khan, while a total of five attackers died in the ensuing shootouts.
Hours later, Pakistani Taleban also attacked a military post in the northwestern Khyber region bordering Afghanistan, killing two soldiers and wounding five others, local police official Salim Khan said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taleban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The car bombing recently was claimed by the newly formed militant Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistani group, which is believed to be an offshoot of the TTP.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks since 2022, when TTP ended a cease-fire.
The deadliest attack was in January when a suicide bomber disguised as a policeman attacked a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 101 people, mostly police officers.
