The number of fatalities from the suicide attack carried out on Saturday against a security checkpoint in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan, in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has risen to 15. Among the deceased are two people who died after armed individuals fired at a vehicle that was trying to evacuate several injured from the area.
Security sources cited by the Pakistani channel Geo TV have indicated that eleven people, including a two-year-old child, lost their lives when a suicide attacker crashed a vehicle into a checkpoint in the Darazanda area. Among the fatalities are six police officers and two customs officials.
The attack also left 35 injured of varying severity, several of them in critical condition, and was followed by a second attack on an ambulance that was evacuating some of the victims, in which two emergency service workers died.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, has strongly condemned what happened and emphasized that the authorities "will never allow the sacrifices of the nation's protectors in the war against terrorism to be in vain." In this regard, he has stressed that his government is determined to "eliminate terrorism."
Meanwhile, the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, has repudiated the attack and ordered that the best possible care be provided to the injured. "Attacking innocent civilians and members of the security forces with terrorist attacks is something condemnable," he stated in a message posted on social media.
For his part, the Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, has directly blamed the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, which has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack, and insisted that "their cowardly acts cannot weaken the nation's determination to fight against terrorism."
The attack occurred about a week after another attack on a police facility adjacent to a mosque in the city of Kohat, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which left at least 22 dead, including 16 police officers, and more than a hundred injured. In response, Pakistan bombed alleged TTP targets in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the Pakistani Army reported this Sunday that more than 70 supposed terrorists have died in security forces operations in the last four days in different parts of the province of Balochistan, in the west of the country, and has again accused Afghanistan and India of supporting armed groups operating in Pakistani territory.
In a statement released on social media, the Armed Forces detailed that "within the framework of the progress of the operations of the Pakistan Army, more than 71 terrorists have died so far in the 'Shaban' operation and in other areas of Balochistan during the last 96 hours."
"This represents a severe blow to the Afghan subsidiary groups supported by India," the statement added, before emphasizing that the troops will continue to act "with total determination." "The security forces and official agencies are committed to the elimination of terrorism sponsored and supported from abroad," it added.
According to the Army, the deceased would belong to Fitna al Juarij, a term with which Islamabad refers to the TTP, and to Fitna al Hindustan, a designation used for several Baloch separatist groups, including the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).
The border strip between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been plagued by strong instability for years, largely due to the actions of the Pakistani Taliban, in a context of accusations from Islamabad against India and the Afghan Taliban for their supposed support of the organization, a claim rejected by both New Delhi and Kabul.
These tensions culminated at the end of February in a new peak of confrontation between Pakistan and Afghanistan following a series of Pakistani bombings against alleged TTP enclaves. Although the parties agreed to a ceasefire, in recent months there have been several exchanges of attacks.