Pakistan must once again face the deadly violence of an attack. At least four people were killed in an attack on Friday evening February 17 by a Pakistani Taliban suicide squad against a major police complex in Karachi, the country’s largest city, and its economic and financial capital.
Three armed men with explosive vests attacked around 7:30 p.m. local time (3:30 p.m. Paris time) a complex made up of several official police buildings and residences housing hundreds of police officers and their families.
For more than three hours, violent exchanges of gunfire and explosions of grenades were heard, before the security forces managed to regain control of the building. The attack began when the assailants fired “a rocket at the entrance gate” of the complex, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told Samaa TV.
“Four people were killed in the attack, including two policemen, a [paramilitary] ranger and a cleaner,” Murtaza Wahab Siddiqui told Agence France-Presse (AFP). the spokesman for the government of the province of Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital. “Preliminary findings suggest that three terrorists were involved in the attack” and “the operation concluded with the deaths of all three terrorists,” he added.
“Acts of Cowardice”
The Pakistani Taliban’s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the assault. “Mujahideen attacked Karachi police office,” a TTP spokesperson said without further details in a WhatsApp message forwarded to AFP.
“Once again the terrorists have attacked Karachi. Such acts of cowardice cannot break the will and determination of the police and law enforcement agencies. The whole nation stands with the police and security organs,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement. Karachi, in the south, is a megacity of 20 million people and the country’s main commercial gateway with its port overlooking the Arabian Sea.
The United States “strongly condemns the terrorist attack,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “We stand firmly with the people of Pakistan in the face of this terrorist attack,” he wrote in a tweet, adding, “Violence is not the answer and it must stop.”
Deterioration of security
Pakistan has been facing for some months, especially since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, a deterioration of security.
The Karachi attack came weeks after a suicide bombing on January 30 against a mosque in the police headquarters in Peshawar (northwest), in which 83 police officers and a civilian were killed.
After several years of relative calm, the attacks have resumed with renewed vigor, led mainly by the TTP and by EI-K, the regional branch of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). In the year since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, attacks have increased by 50% in Pakistan, according to the Pakistani institute PIPS.
The TTP is a movement distinct from that of the new Afghan leaders but which shares common roots with it. In November, the group denounced a fragile ceasefire with Islamabad and promised to carry out attacks throughout Pakistan. Since then, he has multiplied attacks targeting the security forces.
Freedom of maneuver regained since the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan
Authorities attributed the Peshawar bombing to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a more radical, sometimes affiliated, sometimes dissident faction of the TTP, which dissociated itself from the attack. The country had been placed on high alert after this attack, with additional security forces deployed and checkpoints multiplied.
During the twenty years of American occupation in Afghanistan, after the fall of the previous Taliban regime in 2001, the armed groups at work along the border between the two countries had to hide from the eyes of drones. But analysts believe they have regained their freedom to maneuver with the return of the Taliban to power. Pakistan accuses them of letting these groups use Afghan soil to plan their attacks, which Kabul denies.
Karachi has already experienced several major attacks in recent years, mainly claimed by Baloch separatist groups.
