PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s particular forces raided a police middle in a distant northwestern district on Tuesday, killing all Pakistani Taliban militants who had earlier this week overpowered guards on the facility, seized arms and brought hostages, officers mentioned.
The swift operation was profitable, in accordance with safety and intelligence officers, but it surely was not instantly clear what number of Taliban had been killed — or what number of officers had been held by the hostage-takers on the middle in Bannu, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, for the reason that brazen takeover on Sunday.
The officers declined to elaborate or present particulars on the operation, which was launched after greater than 40 hours of negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban failed. On Monday, officers had mentioned that one officer was killed when the Taliban detainees, held for years on the Bannu counter-terrorism middle, seized the power.
Protection Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif advised reporters that the operation was profitable but in addition declined to elaborate, saying a authorities assertion could be coming later Tuesday.
The Taliban had claimed they had been holding at the least eight safety personnel. Earlier, officers mentioned there have been about 30 Taliban fighters concerned and that they’d demanded a secure passage to former strongholds of the militant group.
Three army and police officers mentioned seven members of the particular forces who took half within the operation had been wounded. Mohammad Ali Saif, a authorities spokesman in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, mentioned the Taliban hostage-takers got an opportunity to give up earlier than the raid however refused.
Thick black smoke billowed into the sky from contained in the compound after two explosions had been heard because the raid received underway Tuesday. Intermittent gunshots continued reverberating throughout the realm for 2 hours, officers mentioned.
All of the officers spoke to The Related Press on situation of anonymity to debate the continued state of affairs. No army or authorities spokesmen had been instantly out there for remark.
Sunday’s brazen takeover of the police middle mirrored the Pakistani authorities’s lingering lack of ability to train management over the distant area alongside the border with Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban, also referred to as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, are separate however allied with the Afghan Taliban, who seized energy in neighboring Afghanistan final yr as U.S. and NATO troops had been within the last weeks of their pullout from the nation after 20 years of warfare.
On Monday, Mohammad Khurasani, a TTP spokesman, had demanded secure passage for the hostage-takers to North or South Waziristan, areas that had been a Taliban stronghold till a wave of army offensives over the previous years drove out lots of the insurgents.
Since then, prime TTP leaders and fighters have been hiding in Afghanistan, although the militants nonetheless have comparatively free reign in patches of the province.
Emboldened by their takeover of Afghanistan by their allies, the Afghan Taliban, the TTP fighters have stepped up assaults on Pakistani safety forces and final month ended a monthslong cease-fire with the federal government. The violence has strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who had brokered the cease-fire in Could.
The TTP has waged an insurgency in Pakistan over the previous 15 years, preventing for stricter enforcement of Islamic legal guidelines within the nation, the discharge of their members who’re in authorities custody and a discount of Pakistani army presence within the nation’s former tribal areas.
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Munir reported from Islamabad.
