By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Taliban militants have killed at least one security official after they overnight seized a counter-terrorism police station in Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, demanding a safe passage in exchange for the release of several hostages, officials said on Monday.
Authorities say they continued to negotiate a resolution to the hostage crisis.
Dozens of suspected militant inmates have taken multiple officers hostage and they are demanding safe passage to Afghanistan in exchange for the hostages’ lives.
“The suspects also fired at the security personnel, injuring another two,” special assistant to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister on information Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif, told reporters but declined to offer further details.
The body of one policeman killed in the shooting has been shifted to a local hospital in Bannu.
The militants loyal to outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in a video message, demanded a safe passage to neighboring Afghanistan but later termed it a ‘mistake’.
On Monday, The TTP, in a statement sent to media outlets, claimed responsibility for the incident, demanding a safe passage to North or South Waziristan instead of Afghanistan.
The TTP warned that in case of an operation, the government and the army will be responsible for casualties.
Authorities said a group of detainees were being interrogated in connection with incidents of terrorism when some of them managed to grab weapons from security guards before freeing an unspecified number of “high-profile terrorists” from another detention cell.
A provincial government statement later confirmed the events, saying “under interrogation militants snatched weapons from the interrogators and released more prisoners who have all been surrounded” by security forces.
The situation is still tense 17 hours after the incident as a military operation is going on.
The city administration late on Sunday suspended access to internet and mobile phone services across Bannu, blocking roads leading to the prison compound and ordering residents to stay indoors.
Akram Khan Durrani, a former chief minister of the province, and sitting provincial minister Malik Shah Muhammad have reached Bannu to initiate talks with the militants.
Both Durrani and Muhammad hail from Bannu.
Pakistani negotiators have rejected all the demands, leading to a deadlock in the talks.
Saif said he has been in “contact with the Taliban high-ups,” but there is no breakthrough yet.
“I spoke to the Taliban high-ups through the night but talks have not been fruitful thus far,” Dawn.com quoted Saif as saying. “The government has engaged the militants to avoid casualties.”
The TTP set up as an umbrella group of several militant outfits in 2007, last month called off a ceasefire agreed upon with the government in June and ordered its militants to stage terrorist attacks across the country.
The group has been blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan, including an attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, and the massacre of 134 children at a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014.
It is not directly affiliated with the Afghan Taliban but pledges allegiance to them.
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