Nine killed, dozens injured in bomb and gun attacks in KP
23 April, 2014
PESHAWAR: Nine people, including policemen, were killed and dozens wounded in two separate bomb and gun attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday, police said, a week after the Taliban refused to extend a ceasefire with the government.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took power last year promising to end years of fighting with Taliban insurgents through peace negotiations. Talks began in February but have achieved little. On Tuesday, three people were killed and 33 others, including 12 policemen, were wounded in a bombing in the Charsadda District during the morning rush hour.
It is the second attack on police in as many days in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the Taliban refused to extend ceasefire with the government early this month. "The mobile van of police was the target," SP Charsadda Shafiullah Khan told local media. The van was targeted in Farooq Azam Chowk of tehsil bazaar. More than 30 people were injured in the attack, including policemen, according to district headquarters hospital sources.
The bomb was planted in a motorcycle and the police mobile van was the primary target. The dead also included a shopkeeper¸ SP Shafiullah Khan said. The injured persons were shifted to the district headquarters hospital, while some of the critically injured were shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar. In Monday's attack in Peshawar, six policemen were killed. Militants attacked a police checkpost near the border with Khyber Agency.
Meanwhile, six people, including five policemen and an ambulance driver, were killed in a separate attack on a police patrol on the outskirts of the regional capital of Peshawar overnight. Three others were wounded when militants opened fire. Senior police officer Shafiullah Khan said unknown people had planted a bomb on a motorcycle and parked it near police headquarters in Peshawar. "The bomb went off when a police van carrying 13 policemen for duty was passing through the spot. Three persons were killed and 33 were wounded," he said. "It seems the police van was the target of the attack."
On Monday, two people were killed when unidentified armed men opened fire in a vegetable market in Chamkani area of Peshawar, on Monday.
According to police, unidentified gunmen opened fire in the vegetable market on Inqelab Road. Two people were killed in the incident while two others were uninjured.
On April 16, the Pakistani Taliban formally ended a 40-day ceasefire, saying the government forces had continued to arrest their men and killed more than 50 people associated with the insurgency. The first round of talks collapsed in February after less than a week when the Taliban bombed a bus full of police and executed 23 men from a government paramilitary force they had kidnapped. The Taliban have been fighting for years to overthrow the democratically elected government and impose strict Islamic law on the nation.
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