BANNU, Pakistan —
More than 30 Pakistan Taliban militants were holding several officers hostage
on Monday after breaking free from custody and seizing a police station,
officials said.
اضافة اعلان
Members of the
Tehreek–e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
group — separate from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar hardline Islamist
ideology — overpowered their jailers on Sunday and snatched weapons.
The militants, held on suspicion of terrorism, are
demanding safe passage to Afghanistan, Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman for the
provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, said in a statement late Sunday.
A senior government official in Bannu, where the
incident unfolded near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan’s formerly
self-governed tribal areas, said hostages were still being held after a failed
operation to free them.
“During the interrogation, some of them snatched
guns from the policemen and later took the entire staff hostage,” he told AFP
on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“They want us to provide them safe passage via a
ground route or by air. They want to take all the hostages with them and to
release them later on the Afghan border or inside Afghanistan.”
Pakistani officials have asked the government in
Kabul to help with the release of hostages, he added.
A second government official told AFP that
“practically no progress” had been made by Monday evening.
The TTP claimed responsibility for the incident and
demanded authorities provide safe passage to border areas.
“Otherwise, the entire responsibility of the situation
will be on the military,” the TTP said in a statement.
A video posted to social media, which the government
official confirmed to be from the scene, showed a group of armed men, with one
threatening to kill all the hostages.
He said they had at least eight hostages, including
police and military staff.
The TTP emerged in 2007 and carried out a horrific
wave of violence in Pakistan, with violence reducing after a military operation
that began in 2014.
Attacks are on the rise again since the Afghan Taliban
seized control of Kabul last year, however, with most targeting security
forces.
A shaky months-long ceasefire between the TTP and
Islamabad ended last month.
In 2012 and 2013, dozens of heavily armed Taliban
fighters freed more than 600 prisoners, including hardcore militants, during
two sophisticated overnight attacks on a jail in Bannu.
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