Five laborers killed in attack on under-construction police station in northwest Pakistan

At least five laborers were killed and one injured when gunmen attacked an under-construction police station in the country’s northwestern South Waziristan region, police said on Friday.

Although no group has accepted responsibility for the attack which took place on Thursday night, Pakistan has seen a sharp spike in such incidents in recent months, including one in which 23 soldiers were killed in an assault on a military base last week. Pakistan says militants, particularly from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), use safe havens in Afghanistan to train for and carry out attacks such as the one last week. Kabul denies the charge, saying Pakistan’s security challenges are a domestic issue.

Thursday’s attack happened in the Daza Ghundai area of South Waziristan district, around seven kilometers west of district headquarter Wana.

“The incident happened late [Thursday] night and the dead bodies and injured person were shifted to District Headquarter Hospital Wana,” the district police officer’s office told Arab News, declining to give more details of the nature of the attack. “The injured person is in critical condition.”

Last week, Pakistan police said three officers were killed in the northwestern Tank district when one of several militants first exploded himself at the main entrance of a police office and residence block and the others stormed in. In January, a bombing at a mosque inside a police compound in Peshawar, the provincial capital, killed more than 80 police personnel.

The Pakistani military has conducted several operations against militants, especially in the North and South Waziristan regions, which once served as a headquarters of local and foreign militants. Police have also fought militants for years, with more than 2,100 personnel killed and 7,000 injured since 2001, according to a Reuters tally.

TTP militants have ramped up their attacks since they revoked a cease-fire with the government last year. Before that, the group has been waging a war against the state since 2007, seeking to overthrow the government and replace it with a harsh brand of Islamic law.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Notice: ob_end_flush(): Failed to send buffer of zlib output compression (0) in /home/sirfpak1/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5349