Four police officers were killed by an IED planted on the side of a road in north-west Pakistan on Thursday, authorities said, in an attack alleged by Pakistan’s Taliban TTP.
The device exploded as police drove in an armored vehicle to help beleaguered colleagues at a police station in Lakki Marwat district.
The four men were victims of “a planned terrorist attack,” local police officer Muhammad Ashfaq told AFP.
Among the victims is a senior officer, Iqbal Mohmand. The attack was alleged by the Pakistani Taliban’s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who accused Mr Mohmand of being responsible for the deaths of militants.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif tweeted his “sorrow” and saluted the “unforgettable victims” of law enforcement “in the war on terror”.
Lakki Marwat district is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which is considered the base of the TTP.
This organization is increasingly targeting the Pakistani police, accusing the security forces of extrajudicial executions of combatants.
Attacks have escalated since the Afghan Taliban captured Kabul in August 2021, with Islambad claiming they are being carried out from the neighboring country.
On January 30, more than 80 police officers were killed when an attacker detonated his explosive vest inside a mosque at a police building in Peshawar, in the north-west of the country.
The TTP, which emerged in Pakistan in 2007, differs from the Afghan Taliban but shares a fundamentalist Islamist ideology with the latter.