Pakistani security forces have put an end on Tuesday to a riot on Sunday at a police station of the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) in the town of Bannu, in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which allowed detainees to take hostages inside the premises.
Security sources quoted by the Pakistani television channel Geo TV have indicated that the operation was concluded early Tuesday morning and added that several agents were wounded, but the authorities have not yet given an assessment of the situation. During the day on Monday, the government had been in contact with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which claimed responsibility for the incident, to try to resolve the crisis.
The rioters, members of the TTP, had demanded safe passage to Afghanistan. The group confirmed that its members detained at the police station had mutinied and taken hostages, and called on religious leaders in Bannu to intervene to prevent further bloodshed, as reported in the Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’.
Intelligence sources quoted by the German news agency DPA said that the operation resulted in the death of 26 militiamen and the rescue of eight hostages, some of them wounded. Five soldiers and three members of a special commando who stormed the premises were also wounded.
Pakistan’s National Counter-Terrorism Authority said last week that the TTP group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, expanded its networks during peace talks with the government and added that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan allowed it to increase its activities in the neighboring country, nearly two weeks after the armed group announced the end of the ceasefire.
In this regard, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price stressed that Washington «stands ready to assist» Pakistan in the fight against the group. «The overall context is that the Government of Pakistan is a partner when it comes to these shared challenges, including those posed by terrorist groups in Afghanistan and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border,» he said Monday during his daily press briefing.
The Pakistani government said the TTP’s decision to break the ceasefire and resume carrying out attacks in the country should be a cause for concern among the Afghan Taliban, which had been playing a mediating role in talks between Islamabad and the armed group to try to reach a peace deal.
The TTP group, which differs from the Afghan Taliban in organizational matters but follows the same rigorist interpretation of Sunni Islam, brings together more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
