By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Four customs officials and a traffic policeman were shot dead in two separate attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday, the same day security forces said they killed five militants in a raid in North Waziristan.
The killings in Dera Ismail Khan came as new figures showed the country had just endured its worst month for militant violence in more than a decade. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), an independent Islamabad-based think tank, recorded 225 attacks nationwide in September, up 13 percent on the 199 logged in August. It was the third consecutive monthly rise.
District Police Officer Ziauddin Ahmed said armed men opened fire on Federal Board of Revenue personnel, and the bodies were taken to the District Headquarters Hospital. He said two of the four had been working for the board on a contractual basis. Rescue 1122 said its control room was alerted to firing at Bhatti Pump on University Road at about 11:40am and that its teams recovered four bodies. Other police accounts placed the attack near Abhaya Bridge at Qureshi Morr, and the exact location was not clear.
In the second attack, gunmen fired on a highway patrol vehicle. “A highway patrol mobile came under fire at Gulistan Chowk on the DIK bypass, killing its driver and injuring two others,” Ahmed said. The dead driver was named as Habib, and the vehicle’s in-charge, Subhan, and a constable were wounded. Local reports gave the site variously as Mufti Mahmood Chowk on the bypass. Another report said it was Bannu Road. A search operation was launched, and police said no arrests had been reported.
Regional Police Officer Syed Ashfaq Anwar suspended three officials after the incident and ordered them to report to police lines. They were Sub-Inspectors Ghulam Qasim and Ismatullah and FC official Asghar Ali, and charge sheets are to be issued against all three. The information available gave no reason for the suspensions.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the recent incidents in Dera Ismail Khan were “a matter of concern” and offered condolences to the bereaved families. “We stand with the bereaved families in this hour of grief,” he said. He added that law enforcement operations would continue with full force until terrorism was eliminated.
Earlier on Tuesday, Radio Pakistan reported that five militants had been killed and two injured in an intelligence-based operation in North Waziristan. Security sources said those targeted belonged to Fitna al-Khawarij, the term the state uses for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, and described them as India-backed. Islamabad regularly accuses New Delhi of backing militant groups.
Violence was reported elsewhere on Tuesday. Police said two militants, identified as Sher Ayaz Khan and Adnan, were killed in an exchange of fire at Feroz Fateh Khel in Bannu. Three people working at basic health units under the Aga Khan NGO were reportedly abducted from Grah Mitho in Tank, according to District Police Officer Abdul Samad. They were named as Saeed Anwar, Safiullah and Syed Basha. in South Waziristan, unidentified people attacked the gate of the house of Maulana Misbahullah, a member of the prime minister’s committee, with explosives at about midnight in Khasokhel. No one was hurt. Militants fired an RPG-7 round at a house in Dal, Upper Kurram, damaging its door. There were no casualties.
Mobile phone services began returning to Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday after a three-day outage.
Dera Ismail Khan has been a focus of violence in recent weeks. On September 26, a suicide blast at a police checkpost in Darazinda tehsil killed at least 12 people and injured about 35, according to the information provided. Police told Al Jazeera that most of the dead and wounded were security personnel and passers-by, including customs officials. The district sits at the junction of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, and customs staff are posted beside police to curb smuggling. Other reports put the death toll at 11 and said a vehicle laden with explosives rammed the post.
The province, excluding its merged districts, recorded 54 attacks in August against 36 in July, a rise of 50 per cent, PICSS said. The state says its forces have kept up operations. An attack on the old Police Lines in Kohat on September 18 killed 23 people and injured about 100, and eight militants were killed in an overnight clearance operation. Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in cross-border militant violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
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