A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a roadside police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 11 people and wounding about 30 others, officials said, in a sign of increasing violence in the region bordering Afghanistan.
The attack occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Bilal Faizi, a spokesman for the provincial emergency service. Local police chief Safdar Baloch said most of those killed and wounded were security personnel and passers-by.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Pakistan has experienced a surge in militant attacks in recent years, many of them claimed by the TTP and the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, a separatist group mainly active in neighbouring Balochistan province.
The TTP is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
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