Pakistan’s Taliban yesterday warned of more attacks against law enforcement officers, a day after four people were killed when a suicide squad stormed a police compound in Karachi.
Police are often used on the front line of Pakistan’s battle with the Taliban and frequently a target of militants who accuse them of extra-judicial killings.
Last month, more than 80 officers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, sparking criticism from some junior ranks, who said they were having to do the army’s work.
Photo: Reuters
“The policemen should stay away from our war with the slave army, otherwise the attacks on the safe havens of the top police officers will continue,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan said in an English-language statement yesterday. “We want to warn the security agencies once again to stop martyring innocent prisoners in fake encounters otherwise the intensity of future attacks will be more severe.”
On Friday evening, an alleged Taliban suicide squad stormed the sprawling Karachi Police Office compound in the southern port city, prompting an hours-long gun battle that ended when two of the attackers were shot dead and a third blew himself up.
Two police officers, an army ranger and a civilian sanitary worker also died in the attack, officials said.
Photo: Reuters
The tightly guarded compound in the heart of the city is home to dozens of administrative and residential buildings, as well as hundreds of officers and their families.
Pakistani Minister of the Interior Rana Sanaullah told Samaa TV that the assailants entered the compound after firing a rocket at the gate, and seized the main Karachi Police Office building and took refuge on the roof.
The sound of gunfire and grenade blasts echoed through the neighborhood for hours as security forces slowly made their way up five floors to end the siege.
The bullet-riddled stairwells gave evidence of the fierce gun battle that unfolded.
The Pakistani Taliban, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban, but has a similar ideology, emerged in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence that was largely crushed by a military operation launched in late 2014.
However, attacks — mostly targeting security forces — have been on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban seized control of Kabul in August 2021, and a shaky months-long ceasefire between the local militant group and the Pakistani government ended in November last year.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has vowed to stamp out the violence.
“Pakistan will not only uproot terrorism, but will kill the terrorists by bringing them to justice,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “This great nation is determined to end this evil forever.”
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