Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, in a pair of attacks, killed four police officers by targeting a police vehicle with a roadside bomb and wounded six in an attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan early Thursday, police and the insurgents said.
The bomb killed four officers in a police vehicle carrying reinforcements sent to respond to the attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. Six officers were wounded in the attack at the police station.
TTP claimed responsibility for both attacks and said that one of the murdered police officers, Iqbal Mohmand, was targeted because he was responsible for the arrest and execution of some of its fighters.
Shahbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, denounced the attack and expressed sorrow for the “martyrdom” of the cops who were attacked.
Since the unilateral ending of the ceasefire with the government of Pakistan, the TTP militants have intensified their attacks on Pakistani police officers, ordinary people and foreign nationals.
In January, the group took responsibility for the Peshawar mosque’s deadliest attack in which more than 100 people were killed and several others were wounded.
In addition, the Police Chief office in Panjab in February took the lives of more than nine people and injured several others.
The most recent attacks occurred just days after Pakistan’s election supervision body postponed parliamentary elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because of increased militant strikes and a lack of funding to support the elections. The April 30 election was therefore postponed till October 8 this year.
