Twenty soldiers were killed in 24 hours in northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, in two attacks claimed by Pakistani groups claiming to be the Taliban.
• Also read: Eight soldiers killed, seven police officers kidnapped in northwest Pakistan
• Also read: In Pakistan, seven dead in an attack on the anti-polio campaign
• Also read: Pakistan: Baloch rebels kill 39 people
Late Tuesday, “a suspected suicide bomber detonated a booby-trapped vehicle near an army checkpoint” near Bannu in the mountainous province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, an intelligence officer under the command told AFP. covered by anonymity.
Mursaleen Khan, a local police officer, said “exchanges of fire ensued.”
The army said in a statement on Wednesday, the day after the attack, that “ten soldiers and two border guards” had been killed.
A faction of the Taliban group Hafiz Gul Bahadur claimed responsibility for this attack on Tuesday evening.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari expressed his “sadness” and “reaffirmed his determination to fight against terrorism”.
The Minister of the Interior, Mohsin Naqvi, condemned the attack while the northwest of the country is experiencing an increase in violence, in particular attacks by another Pakistani Taliban group, the TTP.
Monday around 5 p.m. local time, less than 24 hours earlier, and in the same sector of Bannu, “seven police officers (had) been kidnapped and taken to an unknown destination,” a senior police officer told AFP under the cover of anonymity.
“Armed men (had) surrounded a police checkpoint in the Bannu region (…) and seized the police officers’ weapons,” he added.
About 24 hours later, a second police officer, Muhammad Zia ud-Din, told AFP that “all the kidnapped police officers (had) been released after a jirga”, a tribal council.
These assemblies of local dignitaries are regularly requested by the authorities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa where the tribal code often takes precedence over state law.
Officer Zia ud-Din refused to give further details on the identity of the kidnappers or the agreement reached by the jirga.
Pakistani Taliban
Monday evening, in the same region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, “armed men (had) attacked a border guard checkpoint in the Tirah region,” according to an intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The exchanges of fire between the two parties lasted several hours,” he continued, reporting “eight soldiers killed” and “nine attackers killed and seven others injured.”
The TTP claimed responsibility for this attack, claiming to have responded to a search by security forces targeting one of its fighters.
The TTP is a distinct group from the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group but both were trained for combat in Afghanistan and claim the same ideology as the Taliban, who have returned to power in Kabul since 2021.
The TTP killed ten police officers on October 25.
At the end of October, eight people, including six members of the security forces, were killed in a suicide attack near a police and army checkpoint in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This attack was claimed by a small, obscure group.
Attacks by Islamists or separatists against Pakistani security forces also occur elsewhere in the country of 240 million inhabitants.
Seven soldiers were killed on Saturday by Baloch separatists in southwest Pakistan, a week after an attack by the same movement left 26 dead, including 14 soldiers, at a train station in Balochistan.