At least five dead, including a former senator, in a bomb blast in northwest Pakistan

4 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least five people, one of them a former senator, were killed Wednesday in a remote-controlled vehicle-borne improvised explosive device explosion in northwestern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Security sources consulted by the Pakistani newspaper ‘Dawn’ have reported that the target of the attack was the car of the former official, identified as Hidayatullah Khan, and that the attack took place in the town of Bajaur, in the region of Khyber Pashtunjuá, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban. Khan was returning from an electoral campaign for the partial elections when he was attacked.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed “deep sorrow and grief” for the victims and ordered that “those responsible for the incident be identified quickly and punished,” according to a government statement posted on his social media profile X. Condemning the incident, he said the terrorists were “enemies of law, order and democracy” but could not “deter the nation’s determination.”

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in terrorist activities — especially along the border with Afghanistan — over the past year after the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), announced in late November the end of the ceasefire agreed with the authorities amid contacts brokered by the Afghan Taliban following their seizure of power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

The TTP, which differs from the Afghan Taliban on organizational matters but follows the same strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, represents more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.