PESHAWAR: After continuous attacks on police and security forces across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the last few years, the suicide bombing at Darul Uloom Haqqania in Nowshera is something alarming for the government and law-enforcement agencies.
A number of attacks have been reported from different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the last couple of days, including a suicide attack on security forces and attack on three posts in North Waziristan, murder of a policeman in Bajaur, attacks in Lakki Marwat and Orakzai.
Apart from a few, most of these attacks were reported from southern districts and the target was police and security forces. The attack on Haqqania seminary is the first attack on any public place in the last many months.
Six people including the chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Sami Maulana Hamidul Haq were martyred and few others were injured when a suspected suicide bomber detonated explosives around his vest when people were coming out after Friday prayers.
Maulana Hamidul Haq was a former MNA and son of Maulana Samiul Haq, the former chief of JUIS. Police investigators believe that he was the target of the bomber.The law and order situation in KP has been worsening fast for the last many months. The statistics of terrorist incidents in the past few years have been constantly poor and police were found to be struggling to improve law and order.
Things started deteriorating in mid-2021 after mostly peace prevailed in KP for many years. The attacks have further increased since 2023. Even the police headquarters of the provincial capital came under attack when a suicide bomber detonated explosives around his vest at the central mosque of the police lines in January 2023. Over 86 policemen were martyred and over 200 were wounded in the biggest attack on the force.
Two divisions in southern KP, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu, are volatile for the last many years. Kurram district in Kohat division, the third southern division of KP, has been facing serious law and order issues since November last year.
Kohat division was relatively peaceful before the situation deteriorated in its Kurram district after an attack on a convoy in November where several civilians were martyred. Also, a police post was attacked in Karak, one of the most peaceful districts in the south.
The government and police claimed to have taken a number of measures in the last few years to improve law and order in KP but despite that police, security forces and civilians continued coming under attack. Some politicians and religious personalities also came under attack during the time.
The official statistics of the last few years revealed that though the number of casualties was not as high as was in 2009/10, around 670 terrorism incidents were reported during 2024, which is highest in the last 15 years.
Before that, 728 terror incidents were reported in KP in 2009, the year when Taliban were controlling a number of areas. The situation had gradually improved after 2013/14 till the start of the current wave of terrorism in mid-2021.
The southern districts are facing more trouble for the last couple of years. As per the official figures of 2024, Dera Ismail Khan district has witnessed the highest number of terrorism incidents, 121, followed by 116 incidents in Bannu and 80 in Khyber district in Peshawar division. In the year 2024, as many as 153 policemen were martyred in different districts of the province while 232 others sustained injuries. The number of police martyrs was 186 in 2023.
Police offices, police stations and posts in many districts of KP came under attack on many occasions in the last few years before they struck a religious party chief at the mosque of Haqqania seminary the other day.