Two Pakistani policemen have been killed and five others injured in two attacks on officers deployed as part of the ongoing electoral census in Jiber Pakhtunkhwa province, in the northwest of the country.
The attacks took place in Tank and Lakki Marwat districts, according to police and Rescue-1122 emergency agency sources quoted by the Pakistani daily ‘Dawn’.
Among the dead is Jan Nawab, while officers Shah Nawaz, Aslam Jan, Bismila, Abdullah and Eid Yan were wounded, all of them hit by gunfire while they were in a van in Kot Azam, in Tank district.
The wounded officers managed to fight back and the attackers fled. Later, police reinforcements cordoned off the area and launched a search operation for the perpetrators.
Separately, in Parwala village, Lakki Marwat district, two armed individuals killed constable Dil Yan near Sadar police station and fled the scene. Police reinforcements have already cordoned off the area.
Last week another policeman was killed in the census process in Dera Ismail Jan district, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistani security forces have in recent weeks stepped up their operations against TTP after the armed group announced in late November the end of a ceasefire agreed with Pakistani authorities amid contacts being brokered by the Afghan Taliban following their seizure of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
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.
In the month of January 2023 alone, the TTP killed 134 people and wounded 254 others in 44 attacks in Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
