A suicide car-bomber and gunmen assaulted a police security post in Bannu district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, on Saturday evening, killing at least three police officers, according to a local police official. The attackers used a vehicle laden with explosives, which they detonated near the post, causing a large blast that collapsed the post and several neighboring houses.
Police official Zahid Khan said the exchange of fire was still underway early Sunday and that an unknown number of officers were believed wounded and trapped under the debris. He did not provide further details about the number of attackers or the scale of the damage.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is a separate but allied group to the Afghan Taliban, which retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021. It and affiliated militant factions have escalated attacks across Pakistan’s northwest in recent years, mainly targeting security forces. No group claimed responsibility for the Bannu attack, but suspicion immediately fell on the TTP, which has conducted similar suicide bombings and armed assaults in the region.