Anurag Kumar
At least 12 persons, mostly police officers, were killed by multiple explosions caused by a fire in a munitions cache at a police station in Pakistan on Monday, according to officials.
The explosions destroyed the counter-terrorism station in Kabal, Swat Valley, in the northwestern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa bordering Afghanistan.
The incident occurred amid a string of deadly militant attacks on Pakistani police, many of which were linked to the Taliban’s domestic branch, and initially prompted fears of a new attack.
However, according to the chief of Swat police, a short circuit in a basement storing “grenades and other explosives” caused the explosions.
Shafi Ullah Gandapur told reporters that there is no evidence pointing to an external attack or suicide bombers as the cause.
Khalid Sohail, a senior officer in the local department of counter-terrorism, stated that the seismic waves caused “the total collapse of the building.”
“A series of two to three bomb explosions occurred,” Akhtar Hayat Gandapur, inspector general of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police, told AFP, adding that the “majority of the victims” were police officers.
Footage from the scene depicted a body being extricated from the debris while a number of small fires burned in the darkness.
The spokesperson for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s rescue service, Bilal Faizi, stated that 12 persons were killed and 50 were injured.
AFP was informed by Akhtar Hayat Gandapur of the same number of fatalities and injuries.
Police on guard
Two attacks on significant police bases have been attributed to the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), since the beginning of the year.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif initially described Monday’s explosions as a “suicide attack” on Twitter.
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He tweeted, “Our police have been the first line of defense against terrorism.”
In a late-night tweet, he stated, “The nature of the explosion is being investigated.”
In January, a suicide bomber detonated his vest in a mosque inside a police compound in the city of Peshawar, northwest Pakistan, murdering more than eighty police officers as the building collapsed and debris fell on worshippers.
Five people were slain the following month when a TTP suicide squad stormed a police compound in the southern port city of Karachi, resulting in an hours-long shootout.
The TTP has long targeted law enforcement personnel, whom they accuse of carrying out extrajudicial killings.
Since the Taliban acquired control of Kabul, Pakistan has experienced a dramatic increase in attacks, particularly in its border regions with Afghanistan, and Islamabad claims that offensives are being launched from Afghan territory.
The TTP was established in 2007 when Pakistani militants fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan split off in retaliation for Islamabad’s support of the US invasion following 9/11.
