Pakistan Taliban warn of more attacks against police after compound raid

Pakistan's Taliban warned on Saturday of more attacks against law enforcement officers, a day after four people were killed when a suicide squad stormed a police compound in Karachi.

The police are often used on the frontline of Pakistan's battle with the Taliban and are frequently a target of militants who accuse them of extra-judicial killings.

Last month, more than 80 officers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, sparking criticism from some junior ranks, who said they were having to do the army's work.

"The policemen should stay away from our war with the army, otherwise the attacks on the safe havens of the top police officers will continue," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said on Saturday in an English-language statement.

"We want to warn the security agencies once again to stop martyring innocent prisoners in fake encounters otherwise the intensity of future attacks will be more severe."

On Friday evening, a Taliban suicide squad stormed the sprawling Karachi Police Office compound in the southern port city, prompting an hours-long gun battle that ended when two of the attackers were shot dead and a third blew himself up.

Two police officers, a paramilitary ranger and a civilian sanitary worker died in the attack, officials said.

The tightly guarded compound in the heart of the city is home to dozens of administrative and residential buildings as well as hundreds of officers and their families.

A senior investigator told AFP early findings indicate all three attackers were from northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the TTP's power base and site of the Peshawar blast less than three weeks ago.

"They entered into the police headquarters compound through the rear entrance which is used by the residents of the police colony," the investigator said on condition of anonymity.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told Samaa TV the assailants entered the compound after firing a rocket at the gate before seizing the main Karachi Police Office building and taking refuge on the roof.

The sound of gunfire and grenade blasts echoed through the neighbourhood for hours as security forces slowly made their way up five floors to end the siege.

The bullet-riddled stairwells gave evidence of the fierce gun battle that unfolded.

The TTP, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar hardline ideology, emerged in Pakistan in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence that was largely crushed by a military operation launched in late 2014.

But attacks — mostly targeting security forces — have been on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021 and a shaky months-long ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad ended in November last year.

"Eliminating terrorist outfits has unfortunately not been a priority of the state," political analyst Tauseef Ahmed Khan told AFP.

"Such attacks will keep reoccurring until the state meaningfully and completely transforms its policy towards militancy and terrorism."

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has vowed to stamp out the violence.

ALSO READ:

• Taliban claim attack on police headquarters in Karachi; 7 dead