Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a military compound, followed by several armed insurgents storming it, resulting in the death of at least three soldiers and injuries to 12 others.
The pre-dawn raid occurred in the garrison city of Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan. Local police officials and witnesses reported that the intensity of the blast had also shattered nearby civilian homes, injuring at least six people.
Security sources told VOA that Pakistani soldiers quickly “cornered” the assailants in a part of the building, killing four of them in the ensuing heavy gunfight. They said that army commandos were conducting a “clearance operation” to neutralize the threat and secure the compound completely.
A spokesperson from the military’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told VOA they are waiting for further details.
Militants linked to the globally designated terrorist group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, took responsibility for staging Monday’s assault. Bannu and surrounding districts have routinely experienced TTP attacks, mostly targeting military and police forces.
Pakistan maintains TTP leaders and fighters orchestrated the violence from their sanctuaries on Afghan soil and are being increasingly facilitated by the neighboring country’s Taliban government.
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated Islamabad’s concerns at a regular news conference on Thursday, saying “this very serious issue” has been the subject of bilateral discussions with Afghanistan for the last several months.
“Pakistan is concerned about the terror threat that we face from individuals and entities which have support and sponsorship from across the border in Afghanistan,” Mumtaz Baloch said. “We urge Afghanistan to take concrete and effective action against these entities and to ensure that the Afghan territory is not used to foment terror attacks inside Pakistan,” she added.
The Taliban government has dismissed the charges, saying TTP is an internal problem for Pakistan to deal with.
UN findings
TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, is known to have publicly pledged allegiance to Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders. It has provided shelter and recruited for the Afghan Taliban to help them wage insurgent attacks against the U.S.-led NATO troops for years until U.S. and international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
A new United Nations report released earlier this month described TTP as “the largest terrorist group” operating in Afghanistan and noted it had intensified its terrorist activities in Pakistan since the return of the Taliban to power in Kabul three years ago.
“TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing Afghans,” said the report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team. It estimated that TTP had “6,000-6,500” fighters based in Afghan territory.
“Further, the Taliban have proved unable or unwilling to manage the threat from Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan…Taliban support to TTP also appears to have increased,” the U.N. report stated. “The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant,” the report added.
Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the U.N. report in a statement over the weekend. He claimed that no “foreign groups” operate in the country, nor are “any individuals or entities” being allowed to threaten other countries from Afghanistan.
