Terrorist attacks on police stations and checkposts continued in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lakki Marwat and Peshawar districts but the cops managed to repel both of them, authorities said on Monday.
The development follows a spate of attacks in the Peshawar, Karak, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Bajaur districts of KP over the past two days, in which two policemen were martyred and five other individuals were injured.
Pakistan has witnessed an uptick in terror activities over the past year, especially in KP and Balochistan, after the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended its ceasefire with the government in November 2022.
Last night, the Gambila police station in Lakki Marwat was targeted, but the Quick Response Force (QRF) opened fire in retaliation, causing the Fitna Al Khawarij to flee in the dark, an official police statement read.
Fitna Al Khawarij is a term the state uses to refer to the banned TTP.
According to the Lakki Marwat police, cops confronted “15-16 terrorists of Fitna Al Khawarij as soon as they noticed their presence and movement on the west and south of the Gambila police station” at 12:15am.
“The exchange of fire continued for 15 minutes,” the statement said, forcing the terrorists to flee. “The police party remained safe,” it added.
In another incident, unknown men hurled a grenade at a checkpost in Peshawar’s Malazai area late on Sunday night, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations Masood Bangash told Dawn.com.
However, SSP Bangash added, that no damage had occurred.
Commander among 3 terrorists killed in 2 days
As cops thwarted nearly a dozen attacks on police stations in the past few days, a commander of a banned outfit was among three terrorists killed.
“All attacks were foiled and not only did the terrorists have to face defeat but two of them were also sent to hell in Lakki Marwat and Karak,” said a statement released by the Central Police Office (CPO) in Peshawar.
“The successive attacks on police stations and checkposts in the Bannu, Karak, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, and Peshawar districts of KP are a clear reminder to our brave police of the challenges that they have been grappling with for the past two decades,” the CPO stated.
In the Karak district, Commander Kashif Azmatullah of the TTP’s Kalimullah group was eliminated, the statement said, without specifying the day or further details of the action.
According to the CPO, Azmatullah was a highly wanted individual by the KP Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) as he had been involved in a recent attack on a Frontier Corps (FC) fort, various police station and checkpost attacks, the targeted killing of constable Irfan, a bank robbery, abductions as well as social media threats.
Azmatullah was killed two days ago in an operation conducted in response to the recent attacks, Karak District Police Officer (DPO) Shehbaz Elahi told Dawn.com.
Detailing the attacks, the CPO recalled that militants attacked a police post located in Lakki Marwat’s Abbasa Khattak area two days ago, but the cops “fought back resolutely”.
In the meantime, a vehicle in the convoy led by Lakki Marwat DPO Jawwad Ishaq was also targeted by an improvised explosive device (IED). However, the statement said, that the “injured police party sent one khawarij to hell while six to seven terrorists succeeded in fleeing”.
Later, the police led by DPO Ishaq destroyed temporary hideouts of TTP terrorists on the border of Lakki Marwat and Karak, the CPO highlighted.
“During the entire operation, KP Inspector General of Police (IG) Zulfiqar Hameed was in constant contact with the Lakki and Karak DPOs to instruct them.”
A second terrorist was killed in the Tank district, while “many” were injured in an hours-long retaliatory action by the police after the Nasraan checkpost was attacked, according to the CPO statement.
The statement also recalled the martyrdoms of additional sub-inspector (ASI) Islam Noor Khan in an assault on Karak’s Takht-e-Nasrati police station, as well as of constable Nazar Ali in an attack on Peshawar’s Pajgai post last night.
KP police lauds ‘public support’
The CPO statement noted that all attacks “conducted in the dark of the night were responded to with immense bravery and courage by the KP police, who retaliated strongly while keeping control over their senses”.
The residents of the area also participated in the response “side by side with the police”, the CPO added.
It lauded the public for “openly coming to the field along with the police against terrorism”, saying it proved that they stood with their “defenders”.
The statement quoted IG Hameed as asserting that the police, along with other law enforcement agencies and the people, would “once again control the rising monster of terrorism”.
