TTP Flag
Radio Mashaal
October 20, 2021
At least five members of the Pakistani security forces were killed in attacks in the northwest of the country on October 20.
Two soldiers and two police officers were killed when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb in the region of Bajaur near the Afghan border, local police chief, Abdul Samad Khan, told journalists.
Khan said a search operation has been launched in the area.
The Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement.
Bajaur, which shares a border with Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, was one of the strongholds of Islamist militants linked to Al-Qaeda before they were pushed back in a series of Pakistani military offensives.
Separately, gunmen attacked a Pakistani Army check post in the same region, killing one soldier, according to a military statement on October 20.
Last week, the TTP claimed a bomb attack on a local political leader in Lower Dir, a district near Bajaur.
The TTP is a separate militant group from the Afghan Taliban, which toppled the Western-backed government in Kabul in mid-August.
However, Pakistan’s militant groups are often interlinked with those across the border in Afghanistan and both follow the same hardline Sunni Islam as its Afghan counterparts.
With reporting by dpa