DERA ISMAIL KHAN – All 10 militants who rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a Pakistani military facility were killed in an 18-hour operation, officials said Tuesday, adding that militants in a separate attack on a health facility killed five civilians.
In its statement, the Pakistani military said eight soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber early Monday rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the outer wall of an army housing complex in Bannu, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
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A splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, led by a militant commander Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack, which has been denounced by the country's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials.
The military said the suicide attack collapsed a portion of the wall and damaged nearby infrastructure, resulting in the killing of the eight soldiers.
Responding to the attack, security forces killed all ten attackers, it said.
The military said a “timely and effective response by the security forces prevented major catastrophe.”
Pakistan has consistently raised its concerns with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the military adds, “asking them to deny persistent use of Afghan soil by the terrorists and to take effective action against such elements.”
The military said Pakistan's armed forces “will keep defending the motherland and its people against this menace of terrorism and will take all necessary measures as deemed appropriate against these threats emanating from Afghanistan."
There was no immediate comment from Kabul.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks, mostly in the northwest which borders Afghanistan, in recent years.
In a separate incident, five civilians, including two women health workers and two children, were killed Tuesday when militants opened fire at a health facility in the northwestern district of Dera Ismail Khan, the military said in a statement.
In a statement, troops stationed nearby responded to the attack, killing three of the attackers.
However, two soldiers were also “martyred” in the ensuing shootout, it said.
The military said that those behind the killings of innocent people "will be brought to justice.”
No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the health facility.
However, most such previous attacks on civilians and security forces have been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. They are a separate group but also an ally of the Afghan Taliban. TTP has stepped up its attacks on security forces across the country since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this story from Islamabad.