By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Three traffic police officers were shot dead in north-west Pakistan on Monday when gunmen opened fire on their van, the latest in a run of attacks on police and other security personnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The shooting happened near Shehzada Market in the Wazirabad area of Tank district, police said. The attackers fled with the traffic police vehicle. Jamshed Khan, a local police official, said the gunmen were suspected militants riding motorcycles.
Abdul Samad Khan, the district police chief, said the three officers died at the scene and that two passers-by were also injured. Ibrahim Khan, a police spokesman said the gunmen “opened indiscriminate fire” and that a large police contingent was sent to find them.
Officers later found the vehicle in the Garha Budha area, abandoned near a bridge under construction, officials said. Police and army personnel began a search operation, and police set up checkpoints on major roads and pedestrian routes to stop the suspects escaping.
The dead were named as Constables Saleem Shah and Gul Ameen, and the driver, Pir Fayyaz. Three other people were hurt, among them two passers-by, and Radio Pakistan reported that one officer was seriously injured. The bodies and the wounded were taken to hospital in Tank.
Police said the attackers were members of “Fitna al-Khawarij”, the label the Pakistani state uses for the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and affiliated militants. No group had said it was behind the attack.
Tank lies in the south of the province, in the same administrative division as Dera Ismail Khan, where a suicide bomber attacked a joint Customs, police and Excise checkpoint on Saturday. At least 13 people were killed, among them two women, a two-year-old child and customs and rescue officials, and dozens were wounded. Gunmen then fired on an ambulance and a police quick-response vehicle, and two rescue workers were among those killed. The TTP said it was behind the attack.
On 18 September, a suicide car bomb exploded near a mosque inside a police complex in Kohat during Friday prayers. Gunmen then stormed the compound. More than 20 people, including at least 15 police officers, were killed and more than 100 were injured, and eight militants died in an overnight clearance operation. Ittehadul Mujahideen Pakistan claimed responsibility. The alliance is led by the Afghanistan-based commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban regime of sheltering the TTP and other militants who it says plan attacks from Afghan territory. The TTP operates independently of the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in 2021, but the two are allies.
Cross-border fighting has flared since the Kohat attack. Pakistan carried out air strikes in eastern Afghanistan on 21 September, saying it had killed 28 militants. On 24 September it struck 10 sites in Kandahar, Paktia and Khost provinces that it said had been used to launch drone attacks. The escalation threatens mediation efforts by China, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 475 violence-related deaths in the second quarter of this year, more than any other province, according to the Centre for Research and Security Studies. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies counted 54 militant attacks in mainland Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in August, a 50 percent rise on July.
Smaller attacks have added to the toll. In July, 15 people, including 14 security personnel, were killed in an attack on a joint checkpoint in Tank district, according to the military. The dead included 12 soldiers, two policemen and a government official. In August, a remotely detonated bomb hit a police patrol in Karak, killing the driver and injuring six officers. Earlier this month, a constable was killed and another injured when gunmen fired on their vehicle during a patrol in Karak’s Shatakai Dam area. In Bannu, two Frontier Constabulary personnel, Havaldar Ishaq and Sepoy Umar Hayat, were allegedly abducted by armed men this month before their bodies were found in a graveyard in Palosi.
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