At least 4 killed as Taliban gunmen storm Karachi police HQ
(Update: adds info on casualties, changes lede, headline, minor edits)
Islamabad, Feb 17 (EFE).- At least four people were killed and 14 were injured when a group of armed assailants from the Pakistani Taliban Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stormed the police headquarters in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Friday, officials said.
“Four people were martyred (two policemen, one ranger and one civilian), while 14 people are injured,” Sindh provincial spokesman Murtaza Wahab Siddiqui said on Twitter, adding that one of the injured was in a critical condition.
The assault has ended, he said in a separate Tweet, in which he confirmed that three gunmen had been “neutralized”.
Sindh provincial information minister Sharjeel Memon told Pakistan’s Geo TV that the assailants reached the office of the Karachi police chief as well as that of the inspector general of the security forces.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Muahmmed Khurasani, claimed responsibility for the attack in a message shared with Efe.
Friday’s attack comes after an assault on a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar in early February killed 100 people, mostly policemen, as well as wounding 157.
Pakistan has seen a rise in terror incidents in recent months. The Pakistani Taliban group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch separatist groups have increased their activities against Pakistani security forces in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
The spike in violence in the country has coincided with the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 in neighboring Afghanistan.
The situation has deteriorated further since December, when the Pakistani faction announced the end of the ceasefire signed just a month earlier with the government in Islamabad, which it accused of failing to fulfill its commitments in peace negotiations. EFE
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