ISLAMABAD – A police officer has been killed and two others injured in a rare shootout in Pakistan’s capital, officials said today.
Last night’s gun battle started when two gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on a police checkpoint in Islamabad.
“A policeman was martyred while two others were wounded,” the police said in a statement, adding both attackers were killed.
Pakistan’s interior minister has ordered an inquiry into the incident, a rare security breach in the heavily guarded capital, which is home to dozens of embassies.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistan is battling a resurgence of its homegrown Taliban following the group’s return to power in Afghanistan last year.
Shahid Zaman, a senior Islamabad police official, said the incident was “an act of terrorism”.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a separate movement that shares common roots with the Afghan group.
Pakistan’s government announced late last year it had entered a month-long truce with the TTP, facilitated by Afghanistan’s Taliban, but that expired on December 9 after peace talks failed to make progress.
The TTP has been blamed for hundreds of suicide bomb attacks and kidnappings across the country, and for a while held sway over vast tracts of the country’s rugged tribal belt, imposing a radical version of Islamic law.
But after the 2014 massacre of nearly 150 children at a Peshawar school, the Pakistan military sent huge numbers of troops into TTP strongholds and crushed the movement, forcing its fighters to retreat to Afghanistan. – AFP, January 18, 2022
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