Pakistan: 11 killed, 20 injured in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa bomb attack
Islamabad: At least 11 people were killed, and 20 others injured after a police checkpost in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province came under a bomb attack on Saturday, local media reported citing rescue officials.
The fatalities include eight men, two women and a child, rescue officials said, adding that personnel were still working at the site to recover victims from the debris.
According to police, the explosion took place at the Aman Mela checkpost, situated near Mughal Kot and Darazinda on the Dera Ismail Khan-Quetta Road, near the KP-Balochistan border, leading Pakistani daily Dawn reported.
Rescue 1122 spokesperson Bilal Ahmad Faizi said the Darazinda station team rushed to the site after being alerted about the blast and immediately launched rescue operations.
“Additional ambulances and rescue personnel from Karak and Hangu have also reached the site to assist with the search and rescue operation,” another Pakistani daily The Express Tribune quoted him as saying,
“The bodies of 11 people killed in the blast have also been recovered from the site,” Faizi said.
The latest attack comes days after a major assault at the old Police Lines in KP’s Kohat on September 18, in which 23 people were killed and around 100 others injured.
Earlier this week, a report stated that the militant attack in Kohat, in which an explosives-laden vehicle crashed into a mosque inside Old Police Lines, was the foreseeable consequence of a Pakistani policy that for years treated jihadist infrastructure as a strategic asset instead of recognising it as a growing threat.
“For decades Pakistan’s security establishment distinguished between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ militants. Groups useful against India or in Afghanistan were sheltered, funded, or at least tolerated. The same networks that trained, recruited, and moved fighters across the Durand Line were never fully dismantled. After the Afghan Taliban’s 2021 takeover, those networks gained more room to operate. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and allied commanders such as Hafiz Gul Bahadur reconstituted themselves with sanctuary, weapons, and ideological cover on Afghan soil,” a report in Khalsa Vox had detailed.