TTP kills six police officers during ambush in Pakistan's northwest

ISLAMABAD: At least six policemen were killed in a terrorist attack on a police mobile van in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province bordering Afghanistan on Wednesday.
The attack took place in Shahabkhel area of Lakki Marwat district in the morning. Police said the slain cops were on a routine patrol when gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on their vehicle and managed to flee. “The deceased included four police constables, an assistant sub-inspector and a driver,” said Irfanullah, a local police official.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack, calling the police a “vanguard against terrorism”.
“Let us make no mistake. Terrorism continues to be one of Pakistan’s foremost problems. Our armed forces and police have valiantly fought the scourge,” he tweeted.
The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a conglomerate of various Pakistani terrorist outfits, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group said in a statement that the attack was carried out to counter a police raid on the outfit’s facilities.
In a separate statement on Wednesday, the TTP claimed that a US drone strike and following Pakistani security raid had killed three of the group’s commanders in KP’s Dera Ismail Khan district. The claim could not be independently verified but the provincial counter-terrorism department had confirmed a day earlier the killing of four terrorists in an intelligence-based operation in the same district.
There has been a dramatic rise in TTP attacks in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Kabul in August 2021 following the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government and exit of all international troops from the war-torn country. A ceasefire agreement between the TTP and Islamabad in November 2021, which was indefinitely extended in May this year, could also not stop the frequent militant attacks.
Last month, thousands of people took to the streets in KP to show their resolve against terror after a school van was attacked in Swat, leaving the driver dead and two children injured.