At least seven personnel of the Pakistan Army, including an officer of the rank of Captain, died when an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted their vehicle in Lakki Marwat area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. The incident happened on Sunday but clear details were not provided by Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) which said that KP police repulsed a pre-dawn ambush at their check-post in Bajaur.
According to Lakki Marwat police, the vehicle carrying the Pakistan Army personnel was on its way to the Kaichi Kamar area. Unidentified persons targeted the vehicle near Sultankhel village using an IED which exploded. Sultankhel village is close of Punjab’s Mianwali district, the police said.
“An improvised explosive device exploded on vehicle of security forces in Lakki Marwat District,” read an ISPR statement. The military’s media wing identified the dead Army personnel as 26-year-old Captain Muhammad Faraz Ilyas, a resident of Kasur, along with 50-year-old Subedar Major Muhammad Nazir from Skardu, 34-year-old Lance Naik Muhammad Anwar from Ghanchi, 36-year-old Lance Naik Hussain Ali from Ghizer, 33-year-old Sepoy Asadullah from Multan, 27-year-old Sepoy Manzoor Hussain from Gilgit, and 31-year-old Sepoy Rashid Mehmood from district Rawalpindi.
Of late, a trend has been witnessed wherein officers of the Pakistan Army are among the casualties, fatal or otherwise injured. “Sanitisation of the area is being carried out to eliminate any terrorists present in the area and perpetrators of this heinous act will be brought to justice,” the ISPR said.
Meanwhile, KP Governor Faisal Karim Kundi and Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur strongly condemned the attack on security forces in Lakki Marwat district. Gandapur has often complained that the Federal government is withholding grants needed for strengthening the security grid. He is also on record saying that the provincial government is not getting adequate support from the Federal government by way of the allocation of arms, ammunition, and personnel to prevent such attacks.
In a separate incident, the police in Bajaur district claimed that they repulsed an overnight attack on its post by militants. It said a group of militants attacked a police post in Miagano area of Khar tehsil with multiple weapons, adding that the militants also used rocket launchers and other weapons to target the post. According to the statement, several police officials present at the post responded to the attack as reinforcements arrived.
Incidentally, there has been a spurt in the incidents of violence against security personnel during the past few months. These incidents are mostly blamed on Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which is now very active in remote areas of KP province bordering Balochistan and Afghanistan. In December 2023, at least 25 Pakistan Army soldiers were killed in three separate incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan.
At that time, Tehreek-i-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), a new group affiliated with Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had claimed responsibility for the attacks. The TJP spokesman had said that bombers belonging to Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat and Mardan districts, had taken part in one attack.
Besides Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, violence has gone up substantially in neighbouring Balochistan also. In May, seven Punjabi barbershop workers were killed and one was injured in Surbandar, Gwadar (Balochistan). This was clearly a message meant for Punjabi workers not to come to Balochistan and steal jobs.
On April 28, in another targeted attack, two Punjabi labourers were shot dead in the Tump area of Kech district. A fortnight before that, on April 13, nine Punjabi passengers travelling on a Taftan-bound bus were killed in Noshki after being offloaded by gunmen belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
