In a daring mission by the military, on Friday they raided a militant hideout in a former Pakistani Taliban stronghold near the border with Afghanistan, culminating in a shootout that killed two insurgents, according to a statement released by the military.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif called on the country’s opposition leader to work out a response to the recent surge in violence, including a mosque bombing that killed 101 people.
On Friday, the military discovered a cache of weapons at a militant hideout in North Waziristan, a region in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said in a statement.
According to him, the militants killed during the raid were involved in attacks on the security forces in the past. There were no details in the statement, and the identities of the killed militants were not immediately known.
The troops regularly conduct such raids to find and arrest the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but are allies of the Afghan Taliban who seized power in Afghanistan a year ago when US and NATO troops were in the final stages of withdrawal. The rise of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up their attacks since November, when they broke a ceasefire agreement with the government.
The latest development came days after a suicide bomber blew up a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 101 people. Authorities say the attacker was wearing a police uniform, but the guards at the scene assumed it was a police officer—a colleague of theirs—and did not search him.
On Friday, Sharif said in a televised address that he had invited his predecessor, now opposition leader Imran Khan, and other officials to a conference on Tuesday to discuss next steps. There was no immediate response from Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in parliament last April.
Sharif said Monday’s mosque attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and claims that it was a drone attack were not true.
Pakistan accuses the Pakistani Taliban, who have safe havens in Afghanistan, of orchestrating the bombing, which injured 225 people. Police say most of the casualties were caused not by a terrorist’s explosives, but by the collapse of the roof of a 50-year-old mosque in Peshawar. The force of the explosion caused the roof, which was supported by the outer walls but not the columns, to collapse.
