By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Two police officers, including the head of a local police post, were shot dead in north-west Pakistan on Wednesday night, hours after 10 of their colleagues were killed in an ambush in the same province.
A third officer was critically wounded when three armed men opened fire on a police patrol in the Gohati area of Swabi district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, District Police Officer Waqas Rafiq told reporters.
The dead were Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Waleed Khan, who was in charge of the Mansori police post, and Constable Zulfiqar Khan. Head Constable Shahid Khan, 28, was taken to the Bacha Khan Medical Complex in Shah Mansoor with the bodies of his colleagues.
Constable Nawab Ali said police received word that ASI Waleed and his team had come under attack. Officers from the nearby police station were alerted and found Head Constable Khan injured at the scene.
In a statement to police, Khan said the patrol had reached India Cham, in the Gohati area, with the ASI in the front seat of the vehicle and himself and other officers in the back. The headlights picked out three armed men carrying Kalashnikovs and pistols, who are reportedly all residents of the area.
“We got out of the vehicle,” he said. The officers tried to arrest the men, he said, but they attempted to flee and opened fire, killing ASI Waleed and Constable Zulfiqar on the spot. Police cordoned off the area and began a search for the attackers. Police accounts did not make clear whether the men were linked to a militant group.
Funeral prayers for the two officers were offered with full official honours at Police Lines in Shah Mansoor, Swabi. Mardan Regional Police Officer Qasim Ali Khan, Mr Rafiq, other senior officers and relatives of the dead attended.
The Swabi shooting came after one of the deadliest attacks on police in the province this year. Ten officers, including Deputy Superintendent of Police Haider Zaman, were killed on Wednesday when militants attacked a police team returning from an operation against illegal gold mining near Kohat.
Provincial police said 18 attackers were killed in the exchange of fire. Eleven other officers were injured and five police vehicles were set alight. The police statement blamed “Fitna al-Khawarij”, the term the Pakistani state uses for the Pakistani Taliban, and described the attackers as India-backed, a charge New Delhi has repeatedly rejected.
In a separate incident, attackers rammed an explosives-laden pickup truck into the main gate of the Band Korai police station in Dera Ismail Khan late on Wednesday night. A powerful blast was followed by heavy gunfire.
Police returned fire and prevented the attackers from entering the compound, forcing them to flee. All personnel inside the station survived and no casualties were reported.
The blast destroyed the gate and brought down part of the boundary wall. A nearby mosque was destroyed and windows were shattered in houses across the neighbourhood. Extra police and security forces arrived soon afterwards, sealed off the area and began a search for the attackers. The district police officer went to the station to review security.
The same district suffered one of its worst attacks in December 2023, when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of Daraban police station, killing at least 23 security personnel.
Elsewhere, police in Khyber district killed a wanted commander of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan during an operation. Two officers suffered minor injuries in a grenade attack by the suspects, the Express Tribune reported.
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