By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen ambushed and abducted eight police officers in Pakistan’s Upper South Waziristan district on Wednesday, seizing them as they returned from a bomb disposal mission in one of the country’s most volatile tribal regions, officials said.
Among those taken was Ahmad Shah, the station house officer (SHO) of Sararogha, along with two members of the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) and five other personnel. The team had been sent to the remote Partogai area of Sararogha tehsil to locate and neutralise a suspected unexploded ordnance device.
The BDU successfully defused the device and the team completed its assignment before beginning the return journey to the station. It was during that journey that the ambush occurred. Armed men, believed to have been lying in wait, intercepted the police vehicle, overpowered the officers and took them to an undisclosed location.
District Police Officer (DPO) Arshad Khan confirmed the abductions to Pakistani newspaper Dawn and said a large-scale search and rescue operation was launched immediately after reports of the kidnapping reached authorities.
“The safe recovery of the abducted personnel remains our top priority. All available resources are being utilised, and investigations are underway from every possible angle,” Khan said.
Checkpoints and blockades have been thrown up across key mountain passes, entry and exit points and other sensitive locations in a bid to seal off escape routes and track the abductors’ movements.
An initial report has been entered into the daily police register and further legal proceedings are underway, the DPO said.
The incident has deepened alarm among residents of the already restive district. Tribal elders, community leaders and civil society representatives have called on authorities to act swiftly to secure the officers’ release.
Local residents have appealed to both the federal and provincial governments to take urgent steps to restore order and halt what they describe as a worsening wave of violence. Several shooting incidents in the district over the past two weeks have left multiple people dead or wounded, officials and local administration sources said.
Wednesday’s kidnapping is the latest in a pattern of deteriorating security across Pakistan’s northwestern and southwestern frontier provinces. After two consecutive months of improvement, Pakistan’s overall security situation worsened sharply in May 2026, driven primarily by escalating militant violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — the province in which South Waziristan is located — and in Balochistan, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
Security analysts say attacks targeting law enforcement personnel have become increasingly brazen in South Waziristan, with militants demonstrating a capacity to mount coordinated operations against uniformed officers even during routine assignments.
The kidnapping of serving police, including a station house officer and bomb disposal specialists, is likely to further erode confidence in the state’s ability to maintain order in a region where armed groups have long contested government authority.
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