Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Saturday that a roadside bomb blast had blown up a military vehicle, killing two soldiers and wounding four others.
A military statement said that the attack had occurred in the Khyber district abutting Afghanistan.
The banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing. The group has lately intensified attacks, including suicide bombings, in the country.
On Friday, Pakistan's national security committee, which comprises top civilian and military leadership, met and approved plans to carry out a nationwide anti-militant operation to stem resurgent terrorist attacks by the TTP and other extremist groups.
"The meeting agreed to launch an all-out comprehensive operation... to rid the country of the menace of terrorism," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's office said in a statement. It did not say when the military action would proceed, noting that a committee was formed to make recommendations within two weeks to determine details.
Attacks nearly routine
TTP attacks have almost become routine in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Saturday's bomb blast occurred.
In January of this year, a powerful bomb ripped through a mosque in the provincial capital of Peshawar, killing more than 100 people, mostly police officers. It was one of the deadliest-ever assaults on the country's police force.
Local conflict-monitoring watchdogs documented more than 1,000 deaths of Pakistanis, including nearly 300 security forces, across the country in 2022.
Pakistani authorities say that the TTP's central command is based in Afghanistan and has enjoyed "greater operational freedom" after the Taliban returned to power in the war-ravaged neighboring country in August 2021, leading to the reemergence of terrorism in Pakistan.
"The TTP's operational capacity has grown significantly following the takeover of the Afghan Taliban next door, and it, along with peer militant groups, presents an existential threat to Pakistan's security and the stability of its neighborhood," the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center wrote in a recent commentary.
Group designated global terrorist organization
The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot and close ally of Afghanistan's Taliban, has also been designated a global terrorist organization by the United States and Britain.
Islamabad has been pressing the Afghan Taliban to evict TTP insurgents or rein in their cross-border terrorism.
The de facto authorities in Afghanistan insisted instead that Pakistan negotiate a peace deal with the militants. They eventually brokered talks in Kabul between Pakistani officials and the TTP. But the dialogue collapsed when the TTP unilaterally ended a cease-fire agreement with the Pakistani government last November.
The surge in terrorism in Pakistan comes amid a lingering political turmoil and severe economic and financial challenges facing the country.
