Pakistan Taliban warn of more attacks against police after compound raid

KARACHI - Pakistan’s Taliban warned on Saturday of more attacks against law enforcement officers.

The warning was issued a day after four people were killed when

a suicide squad stormed a police compound in Karachi.

The police are often used on the front line of Pakistan’s battle with the Taliban, and are frequently a target of militants who accuse them of extra-judicial killings.

In January, more than 80 officers were killed when

a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a mosque inside a police compound

in the north-western city of Peshawar.

It sparked 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 on Saturday 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.”

On Friday evening, a Taliban suicide squad stormed the sprawling Karachi Police Office compound in the southern port city.

It prompted an hours-long 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 sanitary worker died in the attack, officials said.

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

Fierce gun battle

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told Samaa TV that the assailants entered the compound after firing a rocket at the gate, before seizing the main Karachi Police Office building and taking refuge on the roof.

The sound of gunfire and grenade blasts echoed through the neighbourhood 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 has a similar fundamental extremist ideology, emerged in Pakistan in 2007.

It 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 Kabul in August 2021 and a shaky months-long ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad ended in November 2022.

Prime Minister Shehbaz 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 late on Friday.

“This great nation is determined to end this evil forever.”

Condemning the attack, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States 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 around the country announced that they were on high alert after that attack, with security at checkpoints ramped up and extra forces deployed.

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

In its 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. AFP