PAKISTAN – At least 13 soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded in a suicide bombing in northwestern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said.
The attack took place on Saturday in Khadi Market, Mir Ali, in North Waziristan, according to local media outlet Khyber Chronicles, which cited security sources. Security officials reported that the attacker detonated explosives near a bomb disposal unit vehicle, killing 13 soldiers.
At least 24 others, including 14 civilians, were also injured in the attack, the report added. “A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a military convoy,” a local government official in North Waziristan told the AFP news agency. “The explosion also caused the roofs of two houses to collapse, injuring six children,” a police officer stationed in the district told AFP.
It was one of the deadliest single-day attacks on security forces in recent months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There has been no immediate response from the Pakistani military. The attack was claimed by the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in areas bordering Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021. Islamabad accuses its western neighbor of allowing its territory to be used for launching attacks against Pakistan—an allegation the Taliban denies. (Aljazeera)
