Pakistani forces end 20-hour standoff with militants in the northwest

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani security forces ended on Saturday a standoff with militants holed up inside a police compound in northwestern Pakistan, officials said. The confrontation began Friday after a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a mosque, and gunmen stormed the facility, killing 21 people and wounding 103 others.

The coordinated attack occurred at a compound in Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan. Many of the casualties were police officers and people attending prayers at a mosque.

Several militants took up positions inside the complex, and a shootout with security officers ensued, police official Mohammad Sadiq said. The complex houses the police’s Special Branch intelligence agency, offices of the Counter Terrorism Department, and houses of counterterrorism officers who have carried out operations against militants across the province in recent years.

Sadiq said the operation ended after 20 hours. Security forces were searching the compound and nearby areas, and the bodies of eight attackers were recovered, according to local police. Bursts of gunfire could be heard in the compound as additional security personnel arrived, residents said, before the operation ended.

Sadiq said two attackers detonated explosives inside the compound Saturday morning and that police had killed six assailants so far, not including the bombers. It was unclear whether the new explosions caused additional casualties or how many militants remained inside.

The suicide attack on Friday brought down an outer wall of the police offices and badly damaged the mosque.

Funeral prayers for police officers killed in the assault were held late Friday at the police lines in Kohat, and their bodies, and those of killed civilians, were returned to their families for burial, Sadiq said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has intensified attacks on police and other security forces in recent years.

The TTP is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistan frequently accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of sheltering TTP leaders and allowing militants to carry out cross-border attacks. Afghanistan’s government denies the allegations.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack in separate statements and expressed sorrow over the deaths. Zardari said eliminating militants was essential to national security.

In 2023, a suicide bomber killed 101 people, mostly police officers, at a mosque inside a heavily fortified police compound in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

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Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

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