Roadside bomb kills 3 officers in northwestern Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) – A powerful roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle killed three officers in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, police said, marking the third such attack in as many days.

The blast occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, police official Sajjad Khan said. He gave no further details, saying only that an investigation was underway.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in a statement blamed the Pakistani Taliban for the attack.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban government. The group has intensified its campaign against security forces in recent years.

Pakistan has seen a steady rise in militant violence, deepening tensions with Afghanistan. Islamabad accuses the TTP of using Afghan territory as a safe haven since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, a charge Kabul denies.

Wednesday’s bombing came a day after militants ambushed a vehicle carrying a government administrator in the northwestern city of Bannu, killing him, two of his guards and a passerby.

Relations between Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan were strained in October after the Taliban-led government accused Islamabad of carrying out an Oct. 9 drone strike in Kabul. Subsequent cross-border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and militants before Qatar mediated a cease-fire on Oct. 19.

The truce remains in place, though recent talks between the sides in Istanbul ended without progress.