Twelve soldiers killed in Pakistani Taliban attack: officials

At
least 12 soldiers were killed in an ambush by the Pakistani Taliban in
northwest Pakistan on Saturday, local government and security officials told
AFP.
Militancy has surged again in the border regions with Afghanistan since the
return to power of the Afghan Taliban in Kabul in 2021.
A military
convoy was passing through a town in South Waziristan district at around 4:00
am when "armed men opened fire from both sides with heavy weapons",
killing 12 security personnel and wounding four, a local government official
said.
A security officer stationed
in the area confirmed the death toll and said the attackers had seized the
convoy's weapons.
The Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for
the attack in a message on social media.
The group is separate to but
closely linked with the Afghan Taliban.
It was one of the deadliest
attacks in months in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the TTP once controlled
swaths of territory until they were pushed back by a military operation that
began in 2014.
Islamabad accuses neighbouring Afghanistan of failing to expel militants using
Afghan territory to launch attacks on Pakistan, an accusation that authorities
in Kabul deny.
For several weeks, residents
of various districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have reported that graffiti bearing
the TTP's name has appeared on buildings.
They say they fear a return
to the TTP's reign over the region during the peak of the US "War on
Terror" that spilled across from Afghanistan.
A senior local government
official recently told AFP that the number of TTP fighters and attacks had
increased.
Nearly 460 people, mostly
members of the security forces, have been killed since January 1 in attacks
carried out by armed groups fighting the state, both in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
the southern province of Balochistan, according to an AFP tally.
Last year was Pakistan's
deadliest in nearly a decade, with more than 1,600 deaths, nearly half of them
soldiers and police officers, according to the Islamabad-based Center for
Research and Security Studies.
















