By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militants stormed a paramilitary checkpoint in Peshawar on Monday, killing six personnel, wounding four others and abducting eight more in one of the most brazen militant assaults on the provincial capital in recent months, security officials said.
Dozens of TTP terrorists armed with firearms, hand grenades and mortar shells overran the Federal Constabulary post in the city’s Hassan Khel area before security reinforcements arrived and cordoned off the site, two security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Eight militants were killed in retaliatory fire and the attempt to seize the post was repelled, one of the officials said.
The TTP posted photographs of the eight abducted paramilitary personnel on its social media channels and claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Federal Constabulary, a paramilitary force drawn partly from tribal levies, provides much of the frontline security in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a long and porous border with Afghanistan.
Monday’s assault underscored the deteriorating security picture in Pakistan’s northwest. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies said last month that after two consecutive months of improvement, the country’s overall security situation had worsened sharply in May, driven primarily by escalating militant violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Pakistan recorded six suicide attacks during May alone, four of them vehicle-borne bombings, which together killed 34 security personnel and nine civilians. On May 9, a suicide bombing in Bannu killed 15 police officers, prompting Islamabad to lodge a formal diplomatic protest — a “strong demarche” — with Kabul.
The following week, a prominent tribal elder was among three people killed when a roadside bomb struck the Rustam Bazaar area in the Wana district of Lower South Waziristan. In early June, security forces said they had foiled a suicide attack on a military post near Miranshah in North Waziristan.
Authorities have responded with intensified counter-terrorism operations. Earlier this month, troops killed four militants in separate intelligence-based operations in the Dera Ismail Khan and Mohmand districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In late May, a two-day sweep through the Darra Adamkhel area on the border of Kohat and Peshawar districts left 13 militants dead. Days before that, a combined operation by police and local peace committees in Bannu’s Miryan sub-district killed at least 25 militants, though two police officers and two civilians also died in the fighting.
Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harbouring TTP militants and allowing them to plan and launch cross-border attacks. Relations between the two countries have deteriorated sharply, with diplomatic rows giving way to deadly confrontations, including Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghan territory in recent months.
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