Pakistan’s Taliban warned Saturday of extra assaults in opposition to regulation enforcement officers, a day after 4 individuals have been killed when a suicide squad stormed a police compound in Karachi.
The police are sometimes used on the frontline of Pakistan’s battle with the Taliban and are steadily a goal of militants who accuse them of extra-judicial killings.
Last month, greater than 80 officers have been killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a mosque inside a police compound within the northwestern metropolis of Peshawar, sparking criticism from some junior ranks, who stated they have been having to do the military’s work.
“The policemen ought to keep away from our battle with the slave military, in any other case the assaults on the protected havens of the highest cops will proceed,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said on Saturday in an English-language statement.
“We want to warn the security agencies once again to stop martyring innocent prisoners in fake encounters otherwise the intensity of future attacks will be more severe.”
On Friday night, a Taliban suicide squad stormed the sprawling Karachi Police Office compound within the southern port metropolis, prompting an hours-long gun battle that ended when two of the attackers have been shot useless and a 3rd blew himself up.
Two cops, a military ranger and a civilian sanitary employee died within the assault, officers stated.
The tightly guarded compound within the coronary heart of the town is house to dozens of administrative and residential buildings in addition to a whole bunch of officers and their households.
A senior investigator informed AFP early findings point out all three attackers have been from northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the TTP’s energy base and website of the Peshawar blast lower than three weeks in the past.
“They entered into the police headquarters compound by means of the rear entrance which is utilized by the residents of the police colony,” the investigator said on condition of anonymity.
Fierce gun battle
Interior minister Rana Sanaullah told Samaa TV the assailants entered the compound after firing a rocket at the gate before seizing the main Karachi Police Office building and taking refuge on the roof.
The sound of gunfire and grenade blasts echoed through the neighbourhood for hours as security forces slowly made their way up five floors to end the siege.
The bullet-riddled stairwells gave evidence of the fierce gun battle that unfolded.
The TTP, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar hardline Islamist ideology, emerged in Pakistan in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence that was largely crushed by a military operation launched in late 2014.
But attacks — mostly targeting security forces — have been on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021 and a shaky months-long ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad ended in November last year.
“Eliminating terrorist outfits has unfortunately not been a priority of the state,” political analyst Tauseef Ahmed Khan informed AFP.
“Such assaults will preserve reoccurring till the state meaningfully and fully transforms its coverage in direction of militancy and terrorism.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has vowed to stamp out the violence.
“Pakistan will not only uproot terrorism but will kill the terrorists by bringing them to justice,” he tweeted late Friday.
“This nice nation is set to finish this evil perpetually.”
Condemning the attack, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States stands “firmly with the Pakistani people in the face of this terrorist attack”.
“Violence will not be the reply, and it should cease.”
Investigators blamed an affiliate of the Pakistan Taliban for the January blast at the Peshawar police compound.
Provinces around the country announced they were on high alert after that attack, with checkpoints ramped up and extra security forces deployed.
“There’s a general threat across the country, but there was no specific threat to this place,” Interior Minister Sanaullah stated of Friday’s Karachi assault.
In their assertion, the Taliban known as the raid “a blessed martyrdom” and warned of more to come.
“This attack is a message to all the anti-Islamic security agencies of Pakistan… the army and police will be targeted at every important place until the way for implementation of the Islamic system in the country is paved,” it stated.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is printed from a syndicated information company feed)
