BANNU: Four members of a local peace committee were killed on Tuesday after unidentified gunmen opened fire on them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu district, police said.
According to officials, the victims were returning from a jirga in the Gulbadeen Lundai area when they were ambushed. Their bodies were shifted to the district headquarters hospital for medico-legal formalities, while a search operation was launched to track down the attackers and secure the area.
The attack comes amid a renewed wave of terrorism in the province. Just a day earlier, at least seven police personnel were martyred when an improvised explosive device struck their armoured vehicle on Gomal Bazaar Road in Tank district.
The martyred personnel included the SHO of Gomal Bazaar police station Ishaq Ahmed Khan, additional SHO Sher Aslam, driver Abdul Majeed, and Elite Force officials Arshad Ali, Shaukat Ali, Hazrat Ali and Ehsanullah. A civilian passerby was also killed in the blast, though his identity could not immediately be confirmed.
Bannu has previously witnessed deadly attacks targeting peace committee members. In November last year, seven members of a peace committee were shot dead in the district’s Hoveed area.
Pakistan has seen a rise in militant attacks since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, with KP and Balochistan bearing the brunt due to their proximity to the border.
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According to figures shared by the military’s media wing earlier this month, law enforcement agencies carried out 75,175 intelligence-based operations across the country in 2025. Of these, 14,658 were conducted in KP and 58,778 in Balochistan.
A total of 5,397 terrorism incidents were reported nationwide during the year, including 3,811 in KP and 1,557 in Balochistan. The military said 2,597 militants were killed in counterterror operations, noting that civilians and soft targets were deliberately targeted in major attacks, with Afghan militants involved in all of them.
