According to the military, seven Pakistani soldiers lost their lives on Sunday when a bomb went off in their vehicle in a northwest area that borders Afghanistan.
The military said in a statement that the “improvised explosive device” that killed the six enlisted men and one officer in the Lakki Marwat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
According to AFP, “the explosion completely destroyed the vehicle” was stated by a senior police officer stationed in Lakki Marwat.
Speaking under anonymity, he continued, “We have information that the vehicle came under fire after the blast.”
Mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has long been a hive of Islamic militant groups including the Pakistani Taliban and the local chapter of the Islamic State group.
“Lakki Marwat is one of the districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa most affected by terrorism,” the senior police officer told AFP.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack.
The most active insurgent organization in the region is the Pakistani Taliban, sometimes referred to as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who frequently target security personnel.
Since the Taliban retook control of neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021, attacks in Pakistan have increased.
329 people were killed in 29 suicide assaults last year, the most since 2014, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
Islamabad charges that the new administration in Kabul has not done enough to expel militants who are taking refuge in Afghanistan in order to plot operations against Pakistan.
The Taliban administration has always refuted the accusations and declared that it will not permit foreign fighters to reside on Afghan soil.
However analysts say the TTP share a common lineage and ideology with the Afghan Taliban.
More than 80 police officers were killed in a mosque suicide explosion in Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in January 2023, which was connected to the TTP.
In September, Pakistan claimed that “hundreds” of TTP terrorists had murdered four servicemen during a cross-border operation in Chitral, a region that is well-liked by local tourists.
