By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Security forces have ended a siege of a police compound in the north-western city of Kohat, killing eight militants after an assault that began with a suicide car bombing at a mosque and left at least 23 people dead.
Officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said on Saturday that the clearance operation at Kohat’s Old Police Lines, which lasted about 21 hours, was over. The death toll from the attack, which struck during Friday prayers, rose to 23 after two more bodies were recovered, the district health officer said.
But the figure remained disputed. A senior police official told AFP that at least 31 people, including 16 police personnel, had died and that fighting was continuing at the time. He spoke on condition of anonymity and the higher number has not been confirmed by the health authorities.
Dr Nasir Hussain Afridi, the district health officer, said the confirmed dead included 17 police officers and six civilians. A total of 103 people were injured, among them 73 policemen and 30 civilians, and the number of wounded was unchanged on Saturday.
The attack began on Friday afternoon when an explosives-laden vehicle detonated near a mosque inside the compound as worshippers gathered. Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the vehicle hit the gate before exploding, and that firing followed. A second suicide bomber then struck near the Special Branch building as gunmen pushed into the complex.
The Old Police Lines houses district-level police headquarters, along with offices of the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), the Special Branch and other units. Kohat, a town of about 220,000 people, sits close to the Afghan border on the route to North Waziristan, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan.
Among the dead were Akbar Shinwari, the superintendent of police for traffic, and Dr Israel Orakzai, head of the children’s department at the district headquarters hospital. Officials said officers of the CTD and Special Branch were also killed, along with a deputy superintendent and an inspector.
Police said four attackers got inside the Police Lines. Early reports had put the number of gunmen who breached the compound at seven. Two who were holed up on the first floor of a building were killed after the operation resumed at 5am on Saturday. One was shot dead. The other, badly burnt, blew himself up, police said.
In a statement, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police said the eight militants were killed “in retaliatory action by police and security forces”. Elite Force commandos, CTD teams and security forces had cleared key parts of the buildings, it said. The operation was led by the additional inspector general of the CTD, the regional police officer and the Kohat district police officer, with the local general officer commanding also present, it added.
Security sources gave a different account of the closing phase. They said the army moved in after dawn prayers and killed the last two suicide bombers, in an operation directly supervised by the GOC, and that seven militants died in total. Army commandos, along with a bomb disposal squad, then cleared the area and handed it to police, they said.
The CTD said its additional inspector general was hurt in a grenade attack during the operation. The militants had entered the Special Branch building after the mosque bombing, it said. He sustained a hand injury, received first aid and returned to the frontline, the department said, having been at the scene since Friday afternoon.
Hameed praised the officers involved and announced rewards for them. “Police, CTD, and security forces fought valiantly; these brave personnel are the pride of the nation,” he said. “The terrorists’ nefarious designs have been thwarted, and we will ensure their complete elimination.”
The attack was claimed by Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, an alliance led by the commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur and linked to the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistani officials use the term “Fitna al-Khawarij” to describe the TTP, which is banned.
Funeral prayers for 15 of the police personnel were held in Kohat on Friday evening, with officials in attendance. Their bodies were then taken in Rescue 1122 ambulances to their home districts of Kohat, Karak, Lakki Marwat, Bannu and Mardan.
Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, asked for a detailed report and called the targeting of innocent citizens “deeply regrettable and unacceptable”. He ordered immediate treatment for the injured. “The nation’s morale cannot be dampened by cowardly acts of terrorism,” he said. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari also condemned the attack.
Tension remained high in Kohat after the operation ended. Police said gunmen opened fire on a police post at the main gate of the district courts, damaging it, though no one was hurt. Courts and offices near the Police Lines were closed, an emergency was declared in the city and checks were stepped up at entry and exit points.
The assault came a day after a roadside bomb killed six soldiers in a security forces convoy in Hangu district, and after troops killed 10 suspected TTP militants in raids on Thursday, according to the military and police.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, has seen a sharp rise in militant attacks, mainly by the TTP and affiliated groups, since the group’s truce with the government collapsed in November 2022. Islamabad accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of sheltering TTP fighters and allowing them to stage cross-border attacks. Kabul denies this. The dispute has grown into a bitter rift between the neighbours, and Pakistan has carried out air strikes it says target militants on Afghan soil.
Mosques inside security compounds have been hit before. A suicide bombing in January 2023 at a mosque in the Police Lines area of Peshawar killed more than 100 people, most of them police officers. In February this year, a suicide attack at a Shia mosque in Islamabad killed at least 31 people and wounded more than 170. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.
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