PESHAWAR: Eight people have been killed in a roadside bombing that targeted an anti-Taliban village elder’s vehicle in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, police said.
Saeed Khan, a senior police official in Swat, said the slain head of a village peace committee, Idrees Khan, an influential anti-Taliban tribal leader, was traveling in the area when the roadside bomb hit his vehicle.
He said that initial reports suggested the bombing killed five but later they concluded eight people had died, including two policemen.
In a statement, Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesman for the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group claimed responsibility. He said the slain head of the peace committee had been supporting security forces for the past several years.
Khan was a local elder and previously the head of a tribal force fighting against the TTP in Swat. Pakistan Army, along with local fighters, were able to drive the militants from the area in an intense military operation.
The operation had made global headlines with the international community.
Local residents said the blast was the first major blast in Swat after the 2009 military operation in the picturesque valley, which is where militants shot education activist Malala Yousafzai, who later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The TTP has been holding peace talks since May in Kabul, Afghanistan. But isolated militant attacks and security raids on militant hideouts have continued, raising fears these talks could break in the coming months, if not weeks.
A formal cease-fire between Pakistan and the TTP is still in place.
The talks in Kabul are hosted by the Afghan Taliban, a separate group allied with the TTP. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan a year ago. That takeover has emboldened the TTP, whose fighters and leaders, officials say, have been hiding in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has demanded that the new Taliban rulers in Afghanistan prevent militant groups, including TTP, from using Afghan territory for attacks inside Pakistan.
— With Reuters
