4 Pakistani troops are killed while responding to an attack on aid trucks in the restive northwest
PARACHINAR, Pakistan (AP) — Militants in Pakistan overnight ambushed security forces who were responding to an attack on aid trucks in the country’s troubled northwest, and four soldiers were killed, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities had dispatched reinforcements to respond to Monday’s attack on an aid convoy in which a driver and security official were killed in Kurram, a district in restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Officials said some security forces were also wounded in the overnight ambush in Kurram, where at least 130 people have died in recent months in clashes between rival Shiite and Sunni tribes. Several trucks heading to Parachinar, the district’s main city, were looted and burned, authorities said.
Qaiser Abbas, a doctor at a hospital in Parachinar, said they received the bodies of four soldiers Monday night.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but suspicion is likely to fall on Sunni militants.
Shiite Muslims dominate parts of Kurram but they are a minority in the rest of Sunni-majority Pakistan. The area has a history of sectarian conflict.
The attack on troops in Kurram comes as they conduct operations in former strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban in the North and South Waziristan districts and elsewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In a statement Tuesday, the military said troops had killed 30 militants the previous day in an operation in South Waziristan. It gave no further details.
Such operations are conducted against the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. They are allies of the Afghan Taliban, who came into power in Afghanistan in 2022.