By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Seven civilians have been killed and three others wounded in twin bomb attacks on passenger vehicles in a remote mountain district of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in an assault deliberately timed to strike not only ordinary travellers but those rushing to their aid.
The explosions struck the Phang Musa Khel area of Bannu district on Saturday — a semi-tribal mountainous terrain within the district’s Wazir sub-division — killing five people in the first blast and two more when a second device was detonated as rescuers ferried the wounded away from the scene. No militant group immediately claimed responsibility.
According to the regional police officer for Bannu, Aamir Khan, the first explosion hit a passenger vehicle transporting civilians when it was struck by a remotely detonated bomb, leaving several on board wounded. As the injured were being transferred for treatment in a second car, that vehicle too was destroyed by an improvised explosive device, triggered roughly a kilometre from the site of the first attack. “A total of seven people were killed and three others sustained injuries in the two blasts,” Khan said. “The wounded were shifted to medical facilities for treatment.”
District Police Officer Yasir Afridi confirmed the death toll and said security forces reached the area swiftly, cordoned it off and launched an investigation. A forensic team was despatched to collect evidence while a broader sweep of the surrounding terrain was initiated, authorities said, amid fears that additional devices may have been planted nearby. Police confirmed that neither security personnel nor any government officials were among the passengers in either vehicle. Rescue 1122 teams transported the dead and the wounded to Domel Rural Health Centre and to Khalifa Gul Nawaz Teaching Hospital.
The deliberate sequencing of the blasts — the second device apparently intended for the rescue vehicle — reflects a tactical pattern seen in previous militant attacks across the region and one that has drawn particular revulsion. The first explosion targeted a Datsun passenger vehicle travelling from Hathi Khel village towards the town of Domel; eyewitnesses said the second detonation occurred approximately a kilometre away, annihilating the car and killing those inside. In a statement, police described both strikes as “remote-controlled blasts” amounting to a “cowardly act of terrorism”.
Condemnation came swiftly from Islamabad. President Asif Ali Zardari expressed “deep grief” over the loss of innocent lives, offered condolences to bereaved families and prayed for the recovery of the wounded. He also issued a direct warning to what he called the “internal and external patrons” of terrorism — those providing militants with safe havens, logistics and financing — and framed the attacks as an attempt to sabotage Pakistan’s diplomatic standing and its efforts to promote regional peace. “The terrorists will be defeated,” the presidency quoted him as saying. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also condemned the bombings and expressed his grief, according to state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Chief Minister Sohail Afridi sought a detailed report on the incident, called the attacks “extremely tragic” and pledged full provincial support to the families of those killed.
Saturday’s attack is the latest in a harrowing sequence of violence that has rendered Bannu district one of Pakistan’s most dangerous corners. Less than a week before the twin blasts, militants attempted to demolish the Teri Ram Bridge on the district’s Miryan Road with explosives, causing partial structural damage. On 12 June, two police constables were shot dead in separate targeted killings in the district. Last month, at least two police personnel and two civilians were killed, and 25 militants died, during a fierce engagement between security forces, a local peace committee and armed groups. On Thursday — just two days before Saturday’s bombings — a jirga, or community council, convened urgently to demand that the government take immediate and decisive action to eradicate militancy from the region.
The pattern of violence reaches far beyond Bannu. Pakistan has experienced a pronounced escalation in militant activity since the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in 2021, with the Pakistani Taliban — Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — and the Balochistan Liberation Army accounting for the majority of attacks, concentrated particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province. Islamabad formally accuses India of covertly financing these organisations and Afghanistan of providing the TTP and BLA with sanctuary from which to plan and launch attacks on Pakistani soil.
The scale of the problem is illustrated by the frequency of recent incidents in the region. In April this year, a suicide bomber targeted civilians gathered outside a police station in Bannu, killing at least five people — among them three women and a child — and wounding four more. In May, the Pakistan military reported killing 44 militants in multiple operations across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Military authorities also reported that 48 fighters from proscribed militant organisations were killed in North Waziristan alone in the first two weeks of June. Pakistan launched a major campaign — Operation Ghazab lil-Haq — that has killed scores of militants and injured hundreds more, while border clashes erupted in October 2025 after Afghan Taliban-affiliated fighters launched what Pakistan described as unprovoked attacks on its frontier posts.
Despite several rounds of diplomatic talks, the two governments have been unable to reach any lasting arrangement, largely because Kabul has declined to move against militant organisations operating on Afghan territory — a deadlock that Pakistani security analysts say continues to fuel the insurgency bleeding through into Bannu and the districts beyond.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
