— TTP claims overnight attack wherein two militants were also killed
ISLAMABAD: A police officer was killed and two others injured in a rare shootout in Islamabad late Monday which Minister for Interior Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed called “an act of terrorism”.
The late-night gun battle started when two gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on a police checkpoint in Islamabad.
“A policeman was martyred while two others were wounded,” the police said in a statement, adding both attackers were killed.
Ahmed has ordered an inquiry into the incident, a rare security breach in the heavily guarded capital, which is home to dozens of embassies.
Hours later, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, raising fears insurgents had a presence in one of the nation’s safest cities.
Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesman for the TTP, took to Twitter to claim responsibility for the gun attack. He said the TTP also targeted police in two separate attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa a day earlier.
Pakistan is battling a resurgence of TTP following the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year. Based in Afghanistan, the TTP is a separate movement that shares common roots with the Afghanistan group.
Head Constable Munawar, the deceased, “was on duty and terrorists shot a burst [of fire] on him,” Ahmed said while speaking to the press on Tuesday after attending the official’s funeral.
18 جنوری
اسلام آباد پولیس کے شہید کانسٹیبل کی نماز جنازہ میں شرکت کے بعد میڈیا سے گفتگو۔کل کراچی کمپنی کے پاس دہشتگردی کا واقع ہوا
ہیڈ کانسٹیبل منور ڈیوٹی پر موجود تھے فائرنگ سے شہید ہوئے
یہ چوری یا ڈکیتی کا واقع نہیں ہے دہشتگردوں نے فائرنگ کی ہے@ICT_Police @GovtofPakistan pic.twitter.com/VnxqBOD9VP
— Sheikh Rashid Ahmed (@ShkhRasheed) January 18, 2022
“This was not an incident of theft or robber,” said the minister who also disclosed the government “have received a kind of signal that terrorist incidents have started happening” in the capital.
“This is the first incident of the year and we need to be very alert,” he warned, adding that both of the slain militants involved in the attack had been identified.
Seperately, Shahid Zaman, a senior Islamabad Police official, told AFP the incident was “an act of terror”.
The government announced late last year it had entered a month-long truce with the TTP, facilitated by Afghanistan’s Taliban, but that expired on December 9 after peace talks failed to make progress.
The TTP has been blamed for hundreds of suicide bomb attacks and attacks across the country.
But after the 2014 massacre of nearly 150 children at Army Public School in Peshawar, the military sent huge numbers of troops into TTP strongholds and crushed the movement, forcing its fighters to retreat to Afghanistan.
Earlier this month, a senior leader of the TTP was killed in eastern Afghanistan. Khalid Balti, also known by the nom de guerre Muhammad Khorasani when he served as the spokesperson of the proscribed group, was killed in Nangarhar province.
— With input from AFP, AP
