Roadside Bomb Hits Police Vehicle Kills 3 People, Pakistan Blames Taliban

Pakistan/DOK patrol vehicles via Wikimedia Commons

JAKARTA - The bomb on the side of the road was heavily explosive, targeting police vehicles to kill three officers in Pakistan on Wednesday. This incident is the third attack in days.

As reported by ABC News, the explosion took place in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, police official Sajjad Khan said. He did not provide further details, only saying investigations were underway.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, Home Minister Mohsin Naqvi in a statement blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attack.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Pakistan's Tehrik-e-Taliban, are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban government. The group has intensified its operations against security forces in recent years.

Pakistan has seen an increase in stable militant violence, which deepens tensions with Afghanistan. Islamabad has accused TTP of using Afghanistan's territory as a safe haven since the takeover of the Taliban in 2021, a charge Kabul denies.

The bombing on Wednesday, December 3, came a day after militants ambushed a vehicle carrying a government administrator in the northwestern city of Bannu, killing him, two of his bodyguards, and a pedestrian.

Relations between Pakistan and its neighboring Afghanistan strained in October after the Taliban-led government accused Islamabad of carrying out a drone / drone strike on October 9 in Kabul.

Subsequent cross-border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians, and militants before Qatar mediated a ceasefire on October 19.

The ceasefire remains in effect, although the latest negotiations between the two sides in Istanbul ended without progress.