Roadside bomb targeting police kills 4, wounds dozens in northwest Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle killed four people, including two officers, and wounded about two dozen others in restive northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border, police said.

The blast occurred in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police official Asghar Shah said.

The dead included two police officers and two passersby, he said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban government and has intensified its campaign against Pakistani security forces in recent years.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence that has deepened tensions with Afghanistan. Islamabad accuses the TTP of using Afghan territory as a safe haven since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, a charge the Afghan Taliban deny.