At least twenty-three people were killed Tuesday, December 12 in a suicide attack against a military building, claimed by a group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, in the northwest of the country, announced an official who requested anonymity.
The attack took place in the middle of the night in the Dera Ismail Khan district, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the border with Afghanistan, a region where attacks have increased in recent months. “Many were killed while they were sleeping and were wearing civilian clothes, so we are still trying to determine if they are all soldiers,” the same official told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
At least twenty-seven people were injured, he said.
Tehrik-e-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), a new group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack. The Pakistani army did not immediately comment on the attack.
Fundamentalist Islamist ideology
Pakistan has been facing a deterioration in security for several months, particularly since the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul in August 2021, particularly in the border regions of Afghanistan. Islamabad believes that some of these attacks are planned from Afghan soil, which Kabul denies.
The TTP has increased attacks, which mainly target security forces, particularly the police, after abandoning a fragile ceasefire in November 2022. The TTP, which is distinct from the Afghan Taliban but shares their fundamentalist Islamist ideology, emerged in Pakistan in 2007.
It killed tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces in less than a decade before being driven out of the tribal areas by a military operation launched in 2014, which led to an improvement in security for a few years.