Islamabad:
Four soldiers were killed in a firefight with the Pakistani Taliban, the country’s army said Friday, in the deadliest clash between the militants and security forces since a ceasefire was called off earlier this month.
Security forces attacked suspected shelters in the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan when four soldiers were killed “during an intense firefight,” an army statement said.
A “terrorist” was arrested with weapons and ammunition, it added.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – a separate movement with the same roots as the militants who took power in Afghanistan in August – said the army’s attack was a “center” for his group.
The TTP claimed in a statement that seven soldiers had died in Wednesday night’s counter-attack, while the fighters escaped unharmed.
In a separate incident, the military said on Friday that two men were killed in a clash in the neighboring Tank district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The militants were involved in “terrorist activities against security forces, targeted killings and kidnappings for ransom,” a statement said.
The TTP did not comment on the second incident.
Pakistan’s troubled border region has long been a stronghold for groups like the TTP, which operate across the porous border with Afghanistan.
The movement, founded in 2007, is most notorious for a 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 children.
Islamabad responded with a crushing crackdown on the Islamist group, forcing fighters into hiding in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is now trying to nullify a comeback of TTP after the victory of the Afghan Taliban.
The TTP and Islamabad agreed a ceasefire in November.
But it backfired on December 10, when the hardliners accused the government of violating the terms of the ceasefire.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)