A bomb attack on a bus carrying workers in northwestern Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan has killed at least 11 people, local authorities said on Sunday. The workers, who were constructing a new military post for the Pakistani army, were killed on Saturday by a pipe bomb attached to their vehicle, Rehman Gul Khattak, a senior North Waziristan official, said in a statement.
Amir Muhammad Khan, a senior police official in the region, confirmed the bomb blast and the number of casualties to AFP. “It is heartbreaking to learn of the terrorist attack in North Waziristan that claimed the lives of eleven innocent workers. We strongly condemn this senseless act of violence and express our solidarity with the affected families,” Acting Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said on X (formerly Twitter).
Islamabad claims that some of the attacks are planned from Afghan soil, which Kabul denies. In early August, after new accusations from Pakistan, Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Yaqoub reported the warning of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada against any attack outside the country’s borders.
Fighting outside Afghanistan is not a religiously sanctioned ‘jihad’ but a war, illicit in the eyes of the Taliban’s supreme leader, the minister said in a speech to members of the Afghan security forces broadcast by state television . In recent months, the Pakistani Taliban group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has waged an increasingly intense campaign against security officials, including police officers.
