Four peace committee members killed in Bannu gun attack

BANNU: Four members of a local peace committee were killed in a gun attack by unidentified assailants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu district on Tuesday, police said.

The victims were reportedly returning from a jirga in the Gulbadeen Lundai area when they came under attack. Following the incident, police shifted the bodies to the district headquarters hospital for medico-legal formalities.

Police said that a search operation has been initiated in the area to apprehend the attackers and ensure the safety of local residents.

The incident occurred amid a fresh wave of terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as a day earlier, at least seven cops were martyred when an improvised explosive device (IED) hit their armoured vehicle on Gomal Bazaar road in the province’s Tank district.

The incident occurred amid a fresh wave of terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as a day earlier, at least seven cops were martyred when an improvised explosive device (IED) hit their armoured vehicle on Gomal Bazaar road in the province’s Tank district.

The martyred police personnel were identified as SHO of Gomal Bazaar Police Station, Ishaq Ahmed Khan, Additional SHO Sher Aslam, driver Abdul Majeed, and Elite Force personnel Arshad Ali, Shaukat Ali, Hazrat Ali, and Ehsanullah. The identity of the deceased passerby could not be ascertained.

In a similar incident of violence against peace committee members, seven of them were shot dead by terrorists in Bannu’s Hoveed area on November 21 last year.

Pakistan has experienced a rise in cross-border terrorist incidents since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021. The provinces of KP and Balochistan, which border Afghanistan, have been particularly affected by these attacks.

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, in his presser on January 6, said that law enforcement agencies carried out 75,175 IBOs across the country in 2025.

Giving a breakdown, he said 14,658 IBOs were conducted in KP, 58,778 in Balochistan, while 1,739 operations took place in the rest of the country.

Lt Gen Chaudhry said that 5,397 terrorism incidents were reported nationwide during the last year. Of these, 3,811 incidents, he said, occurred in KP, 1,557 in Balochistan, and 29 incidents were reported in other parts of the country.

He said that 2,597 terrorists were killed during counterterror operations last year. While providing details of 10 major terror attacks across the country, he said that civilians and soft targets had been deliberately targeted, and Afghan militants were involved in all attacks.