Casualties reported in bomb blasts, gunfire in Pakistan’s northwest

Two killed as motorcycle explodes outside police station in Bannu district; several reported killed in vehicle blast in Bajaur.

Two bomb attacks and a gun battle between police and rebel fighters in northwest Pakistan have killed at least three people and possibly as many as a dozen, according to reports.

The Associated Press news agency reported that two people were killed on Monday when explosives attached to a parked motorcycle detonated near the entrance of a police station in Bannu, a district in northwest Pakistan’s volatile Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.

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Later in the day, an explosives-laden vehicle detonated while being driven towards a security checkpoint in the province’s Bajaur district, local police official Zafar Khan told the AP, reporting that a girl was killed when a nearby building collapsed due to the force of the blast.

According to Khan, at least eight members of the Pakistan Taliban group, known by the acronym TTP, were then killed by troops in a gun battle.

Reporting on violence in Bajaur, the AFP news agency said eight people were killed when a suicide bomber drove a vehicle rigged with explosives into the wall of a religious college in the district.

“As a result, eight police and Frontier Corps personnel present inside the seminary were martyred and 10 others injured,” a security official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It was not known if the explosions reported at the security checkpoint in Bajaur and the seminary blast in the district were linked or separate attacks.

The official who spoke anonymously to AFP also reported that a child was killed when the roofs of nearby houses collapsed because of the explosion at the seminary.

In another incident reported by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police, three police personnel and as many rebel fighters were killed during a search operation in the province’s Shangla district. Police said the deceased fighters were involved in “attacks targeting Chinese nationals”.

Pakistan has seen a surge in unprecedented attacks against its security forces since 2021, coinciding with the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.

More than 2,400 deaths were recorded for the first three quarters of 2025, an increase over the previous year’s death toll of about 2,500 in attacks across Pakistan.

Pakistan has blamed the majority of the attacks on the TTP, whose leaders are now allegedly based in Afghanistan.

TTP members hail largely from the tribal areas of Pakistan, along the Afghan border.