Three people killed in bomb attack on bridge in northern Pakistan

5 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least three people were killed and seven others injured on Friday when a bomb exploded on a bridge in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near the border with Afghanistan, authorities in the Central Asian country confirmed.

Police Superintendent Khalid Khan told Pakistani daily Dawn that “unidentified terrorists” planted the bomb on a bridge in the Takhtbai area and detonated it as a police van passed by.

Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has condemned the attack and expressed his condolences to the victims in a message posted on his social network X account. At the moment, there is no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Khíber Pakhtunkhwa has been the scene of dozens of attacks by the terrorist group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Pakistani Taliban, since it ended in November 2022 a ceasefire agreed with the Pakistani authorities following a process mediated by the Taliban, who took power in Afghanistan in 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.