BANNU: Six police officers were injured on Monday when gunmen opened fire on the vehicle of the North Waziristan District Police Officer (DPO) near Mamash Khel town in Bannu district, an official reported.
Bannu Regional Police Officer (RPO) Sajjad Khan confirmed the incident, explaining that the attack took place on Miranshah Road, which connects Bannu and North Waziristan. “Armed men opened fire at the vehicle of North Waziristan’s DPO,” RPO Khan said, adding that the DPO himself was unharmed in the attack.
The injured police officers were transported to the Bannu District Headquarters Hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, the attackers, whose identities remain unknown, fled into nearby areas, prompting a search operation by local authorities to track them down.
This incident comes amid a growing wave of terrorism in Pakistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan, since the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) broke its ceasefire with the government in November 2022. The past few months have seen an uptick in attacks on law enforcement agencies, with police in KP increasingly targeted.
Just the previous day, a station house officer and two other police officers were injured in an IED blast in Hangu district. Additionally, last week, terrorists abducted a police official from Bannu’s Havaid Adda area.
In a separate development, the Bannu police announced the recovery of Constable Noor Zaman, who had been kidnapped by militants in North Waziristan’s Mir Ali town. Zaman was on his way to attend his brother’s funeral, Constable Javed Khan, who had been martyred in a gun attack in Bannu. In response to the rising militancy, security forces have stepped up counter-terrorism operations in both KP and Balochistan.
