By nine Mahsun and Ahmed municipalities
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — A rapid response by security forces thwarted an attempt by Pakistani Taliban militants to take cadets hostage at a military college overnight when a suicide bomber and five other assailants attacked the facility in northwest Pakistan, police said Tuesday.
The attack began Monday evening when the attacker attempted to storm the cadet college in Wana, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, which until a few years ago served as a base for the Pakistani Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other foreign militants.
According to Alamgir Mahsud, the local police chief, two of the militants were quickly killed by troops on Monday evening, while three others managed to enter the vast compound before being cornered in an administrative block. Army commandos were participating in the response operation and there were still intermittent exchanges of fire, Mahsud said.
The administration block is away from the building which houses hundreds of students and staff.
“All cadets, instructors and staff remained safe,” Mahsud said, adding that troops deployed at the college prevented the attackers from reaching the main building.
Dozens of nearby homes were severely damaged by the suicide bomber’s explosion, which injured at least 16 civilians. Some soldiers were also injured during the assault and the exchange of fire that followed, he added, noting that more details would be shared once the operation was over.
The military has not reported the ongoing operation, although it said in a statement Monday that the attack was the work of “Khawarij,” a term used by the government to refer to members of the banned group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations.
The army claimed that the attackers benefited from support from India and contacts in Afghanistan, accusations that Islamabad has often leveled against New Delhi and Kabul, which deny them.
The TTP, which is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, has denied any involvement in the school attack. The group has become emboldened since the Taliban took power in Kabul in 2021, and many of its leaders and fighters are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has seen an increase in militant attacks in recent years. The deadliest school attack occurred in 2014, when Taliban gunmen killed 154 people, mostly children, at a military school in Peshawar. According to the army, the attackers wanted to repeat on Monday what happened during the 2014 attack in Peshawar.
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have increased in recent months. Kabul blamed Islamabad for the October 9 drone strikes that killed several people in the Afghan capital and vowed to retaliate. The resulting cross-border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and militiamen before Qatar negotiated a ceasefire on October 19, which remains in effect.
Two rounds of peace talks have since taken place in Istanbul – most recently on Thursday – but they ended without an agreement after Kabul refused to provide a written guarantee that the TTP and other armed groups would not use Afghan territory against Pakistan. A previous, brief ceasefire between Pakistan and the TTP, brokered by Kabul in 2022, later collapsed after the group accused Islamabad of violating it.
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Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to this story from Peshawar, Pakistan.
