Northwest Pakistan witnesses two consecutive days of suicide attacks claiming four lives

Security officials confirmed that at least four people, including two soldiers, a policeman and a civilian, were killed Wednesday in a suicide attack targeting a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan.

This is the second attack hit Pakistan in two days.

The bombing took place in North Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban militant group, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

A number of civilians were also wounded in the attack, according to Rehmat Khan, a local police official.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicions likely fall on the Pakistani Taliban.

In the past six months, the Pakistani Taliban have stepped up their attacks since they unilaterally ended a ceasefire with the Pakistani government, brokered by neighboring Afghanistan last year.

On Wednesday, the Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility for an attack the previous day on an oil and gas plant in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the border with Afghanistan.

Four security forces and two private guards were killed in the attack on the facility run by a European multinational company, MOL Pakistan Oil and Gas.

Despite being a separate group, the TTP remains a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in August 2021 after US and NATO forces withdrew from the country after two decades of war. Some say that the seizure of power emboldened the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistan.