‘Expect more attacks vs Pakistani police’

KARACHI, Pakistan: Pakistan’s Taliban on Saturday warned of more attacks against law enforcement officers after a suicide squad stormed a police compound in the city of Karachi the day before, killing at least four people.

The police are often used on the front line of the South Asian nation’s battle with the Taliban and frequently a target of militants who accuse them of extrajudicial killings.

Last month, more than 80 officers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, sparking criticism from some junior ranks, who said they were having to do the army’s work.

“The policemen should stay away from our war with the slave army, otherwise the attacks on the safe havens of the top police officers will continue,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said in an English-language statement.

“We want to warn the security agencies once again to stop martyring innocent prisoners in fake encounters. Otherwise, the intensity of future attacks will be more severe,” it warned.

On Friday evening, a Taliban suicide squad stormed the sprawling Karachi Police Office compound in the southern port city, prompting an hourslong gun battle that ended when two of the attackers were shot dead and a third blew himself up.

Two police officers, an army ranger and a civilian sanitation worker died in the attack.

The tightly guarded compound in the heart of the country’s former capital is home to dozens of administrative and residential buildings, as well as hundreds of officers and their families.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told Samaa television that the assailants entered the compound after firing a rocket at the gate before seizing the main office building and taking refuge on the roof.

The sound of gunfire and grenade blasts echoed through the neighborhood for hours as security forces slowly made their way up five floors to end the siege.

The bullet-riddled stairwells gave evidence of the fierce gun battle that unfolded.

The TTP, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar fundamental Islamist ideology, emerged in Pakistan in 2007 and carried out a horrific wave of violence that was largely crushed by a military operation launched in late 2014.

But attacks — mostly targeting security forces — have been on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban seized control of their country’s capital Kabul in August 2021 and a shaky, monthslong ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad ended last November.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has vowed to stamp out the violence.

“Pakistan will not only uproot terrorism, but will kill the terrorists by bringing them to justice,” he tweeted on Friday night. “This great nation is determined to end this evil forever.”

United States State Department spokesman Ned Price condemned the attack, saying Washington stands “firmly with the Pakistani people in the face of this terrorist attack. Violence is not the answer, and it must stop.”

Investigators blamed an affiliate of the Pakistan Taliban for the January blast at the Peshawar police compound.

Provinces across the country announced they were on high alert after that attack, with checkpoints ramped up, and extra security forces deployed.

“There’s a general threat across the country, but there was no specific threat to this place,” Sanaullah said of Friday’s attack.

In their statement, the Taliban called the raid “a blessed martyrdom” and warned of more to come.

“This attack is a message to all the anti-Islamic security agencies of Pakistan ... the army and police will be targeted at every important place until the way for implementation of the Islamic system in the country is paved,” it said.