Situationer: Southern KP faces frequent drone attacks

PESHAWAR: Terrorists are frequently using drones to attack police and public places in various southern areas, especially Bannu.

An official said that the Miryan Police Station was attacked with drones five times in the last almost a month. Some other areas were also hit with explosives dropped by the quadcopters in recent months.

“Quadcopters were seen in the urban areas of Bannu, including the vicinity of police offices, late Friday night after which snipers were deployed to shoot them down,” an official said. He added after the rural areas, this was for the first time that these machines were seen in the skies of the city. A couple of days back, police and terrorists used drones against each other during an operation in the limits of Miryan Police Station in Bannu. One constable was wounded when a drone dropped explosives.

The official said police used surveillance drones while the quadcopter of terrorists was carrying explosives. Both sides also used heavy weapons including rocket launchers.

An official at the Central Police Office said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police had recently asked the government for purchase of an anti-drone system that can hit and detect the quadcopters. The force has provided one anti-drone gun in Peshawar while the system and other guns are in the process and will be provided to different regions soon, he added.

“Bannu and southern districts need an anti-drone system and guns as well as other latest gadgets to counter daily attacks by the terrorists with sophisticated weapons,” an official said.

Before the drone technology, terrorists in different areas used the latest thermal imaging guns to target policemen and security officials while remaining in the dark. These guns with thermal imaging scopes were believed to be brought from Afghanistan after the return of Nato forces.

A number of policemen and others were targeted with the thermal guns in the last couple of years after which police were also provided the technology to detect the movement of terrorists in dark and hit them before they open fire.

Before that a number of locally made bombs, IEDs, were used in hundreds of attacks on security personnel, police and civilians in the last two decades. Technology was also used in calls for extortion to well-off people in different areas of KP in the last many years.