Ten police officers and 18 militants were killed, and 12 other police personnel wounded, when armed fighters ambushed a security convoy in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, authorities said.
The assault took place in the Gumbat area of Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as officers were returning from an operation targeting illegal gold mining, according to a provincial police statement, with the Pakistani Taliban claiming responsibility hours later, says Al Jazeera.
During the attack, militants set two police vehicles ablaze, while two additional police vehicles and a private vehicle were reported missing, a senior administrative official in Kohat told AFP. Earlier in the day, a local emergency services spokesman confirmed a “firing incident involving police personnel” in the district, noting that rescue teams were treating a dozen injured officers.
In a separate security operation in the district’s Orakzai area, forces killed 10 fighters affiliated with the Pakistan Taliban and seized a large cache of weapons, another senior administrative official said.
Security forces in the border province have been battling an escalating wave of militancy that Islamabad maintains originates from across the border in Afghanistan—an allegation firmly rejected by the Taliban government in Kabul.
The Pakistan Taliban, formerly known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have intensified assaults on security personnel in the region in recent months, driving a broader surge in violence across the country over the past few years. While operationally separate, the TTP is closely allied with the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021.
Bilateral relations between Islamabad and Kabul have remained strained since the Afghan Taliban’s takeover, deteriorating sharply following deadly border clashes in October last year that resulted in the near-total closure of their shared frontier. Pakistani authorities routinely accuse Kabul of harbouring TTP insurgents, which Afghan officials deny. According to figures from the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in fighting between the two neighbours over the past year.
