Peshawar: In an early-morning attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, Taliban militants wounded six police officers and killed four by targeting a police vehicle with a roadside bomb, according to officials.
According to the police and the insurgents, four police officers in a police truck carrying reinforcements dispatched to deal with the attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a town in the Afghan bordering province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were killed. While the attack on the police station injured six cops.
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Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for attacks
Local police officer Ashfaq Khan said a search is being conducted for the militant suspects who attacked the Lakki Marwat police station and afterwards targeted the police van with a bomb. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. The group know as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP is separate but allied with Afghanistan's Taliban.
There has been an uptick in attacks in Pakistan after the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with the government of Pakistan. TTP has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 when US and NATO troops were leaving the country after 20 years of war. Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuaries in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.
Pakistan has seen innumerable militant attacks in the past two decades but there has been an uptick since November, when the TTP ended a monthslong Afghan Taliban-brokered cease-fire with the government of Pakistan.
(With AP inputs)