A policeman was killed and five others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Bannu on Thursday apparently targeting a police van, close to the scene of a deadly suicide attack on security forces a day earlier, police said.
The policemen were hit in their car while on patrol in the garrison town, southwest of Peshawar city in the troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, where a Taliban-claimed attack on a police station in Sardi Khel town of the district on Wednesday left 21 people dead.
“One policeman has died and five others were wounded. It was a remote-controlled bomb,” district police chief Mohammad Iftikhar told AFP by telephone.
The injured were shifted to the district headquarters hospital. The police launched a crack down against the militants and seized two bags full of explosives from Miryan Road.
In Wednesday’s attack, 18 people were killed and 15 others wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police station in Bannu.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, part of a campaign of violence against security forces they say is in revenge for US drone strikes on remote and militant-hit tribal areas.
Meanwhile, the death toll of Wednesday’s suicide bombing on a mosque in Meeryan rose to 21, after a policeman died at a local hospital.
Sources told The Express Tribune that 12 policemen and four paramilitary personnel were killed in the first deadliest attack of the new year.
Meanwhile, a policeman was killed and six others were injured when an IED targeted a police van in the limits of the Jani Khel police Station.
A Bannu Police official told the Express Tribune that the attack came at around 8:54am, when an improvised explosives targeted a police mobile van.
The official said that the victim was identified as Constable Gul Marjan The injured were taken to he Bannu hospital.
Around 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on terror networks linked to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 14th, 2011.
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