KARACHI, (AA) – A roadside bomb that targeted a federal minister killed two policemen and injured three others — while leaving the minister unharmed — in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, local officials said.
The attack occurred in Federal Minster Akram Khan Durrani’s hometown of Bannu, located some 250 kilometers from capital Islamabad, Kamran Zeb, Bannu commissioner, told reporters.
Bannu is also adjacent to the restive North Waziristan tribal region, where the Pakistani army has been engaged in ongoing operations against Taliban militants since June of last year.
Durrani, who served as chief minister of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province on the border of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2007, had been on his way home after attending a public meeting near North Waziristan when the attack occurred.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban — whose capacities were thought to have been degraded by the ongoing military operation in North Waziristan — remains active in the region.
Duranni, a senior leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), one of Pakistan’s two mainstream religious parties, is one of several party leaders to have been targeted by the Pakistani Taliban’s parent organization, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in recent years.
While the JUI, like the Taliban, adheres to the Deobandi school of thought, it opposes the use of suicide and terrorist attacks.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, for his part, condemned Thursday’s attack and directed the nation’s security agencies to bring the perpetrators to justice.
