Man killed, two injured in Bannu IED blast

A man was killed and two others injured on Sunday when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded near Bakakhel Mandi area in Bannu, police said.

Police control Bannu said the IED was planted in a motorcycle and the explosion resulted in the killing of a citizen identified as Khan Muhammad, while two others identified as Arif Khan and Zahid were injured.

The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital where their situation was stated to be stable.

Police cordoned off the area soon after the incident and started a search operation to arrest the persons involved in the incident.

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Pakistan's security forces have conducted numerous operations against terrorism across the country, not only arresting terrorists and their facilitators but also foiling several attacks during the last three months.

Terrorism has been on the rise in the country particularly Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ever since a ceasefire between Pakistan and TTP militants ended in November last year.

Currently, there are between eight to 12 thousand TTP militants in Afghanistan. The number goes up to 30,000 if their family members are included.

Read more: Terrorist 'sent to hell' in Awaran operation

After the Afghan Taliban takeover in August 2021, the then government of Prime Minister Imran Khan initiated talks with the TTP and allowed hundreds of TTP militants to resettle in Pakistan. The move, however, backfired as returning TTP militants started targeting the security forces and carried out major terrorist attacks.

Since then, Pakistan's security forces have conducted numerous operations across the country, not only arresting terrorists and their facilitators but also foiling several attacks during the last several months.

They have killed at least 142 terrorists during the last three months as operations to eliminate terrorism from the country continue. At least 1,007 terrorists were arrested during 6,921 operations by security forces across the country in the last three months.

A total of 1,960 operations were conducted in K-P, out of which 1,516 were area-domination operations, 301 were intelligence-based operations, and 143 were area-sanitisation operations.

As a result of the operations conducted by security forces, 98 terrorists were killed and 540 were arrested in K-P.