Pakistani Taliban claim multiple attacks on police

Three policemen and three assailants were killed in the shootouts

By AP

Published: Tue 18 Jan 2022, 4:13 PM

The Pakistani Taliban targeted police in multiple attacks in Islamabad and elsewhere in the country’s northwest.

Three policemen and three assailants were killed in the shootouts, police and a militant spokesman said Tuesday.

The first attack happened in Pakistan’s capital city on Monday, killing an officer and both assailants. That raised fears that insurgents had a presence in one of the country’s safest cities.

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In separate attacks, two policemen were killed in the districts of Dir and North Waziristan in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, authorities said.

Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesman for the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, took to Twitter to claim responsibility for the attacks in Pakistan’s capital and in the northwest. He said one of the fighters died in the attack in the northwestern Bajur district.

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No police spokesman was available for comment about Monday night’s attack in Bajur.

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s interior minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, attended the funeral of the police officer who was killed in Islamabad the night before. Ahmed said both of the slain militants involved in the attack had been identified.

Although militants often target security forces in Pakistan, the country’s capital has largely been peaceful in recent years. The Pakistani Taliban, who have been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, on Tuesday warned that they could carry out more attacks on security forces in the future.