©Sameer Akhtari via Unsplash
A suicide bombing took place on Saturday night in the city of Bannu, in northwestern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.
According to police, an attacker and armed men detonated a vehicle full of explosives at a security checkpoint. A building collapsed in the process. After the explosion, a gunfight ensued between the remaining attackers and the police. As many as 14 police officers were killed. Some sources even speak of 15 police officers killed. Three more were wounded. Some officers died under the rubble, others during the ensuing firefight.
Phased attack
The attack took place on the outskirts of the town of Bannu, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and consisted of three phases: first with a car bomb, then by attacking survivors in the rubble and then by ambushing security forces who quickly rushed to the scene of the explosion.
Anonymous police sources, quoted by the French news agency Agence France-Presse, reported that the militants also allegedly used drones. According to a number of witnesses, the explosion and subsequent fierce firefight with heavy weapons not only caused the building occupied by the security forces to collapse, but also damaged some surrounding houses.
The action was claimed by the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban, better known as the TTP.
The attack complicates diplomatic tensions between Islamabad and Kabul. Indeed, Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of aiding and harboring terrorists, but Afghanistan denies it.
©Sameer Akhtari via Unsplash - illustration image of a member of the Pakistani military