A roadside bomb detonated near a convoy of foreign diplomats visiting Pakistan's scenic Swat district Sunday, killing at least one police officer and injuring several others.
Police officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the district is located, confirmed the casualties, saying the victims were part of the squad leading the convoy of about a dozen countries. They noted that all the foreign dignitaries were unharmed.
The foreigners were mostly ambassadors from Russia, Portugal, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“All the ambassadors remained safe in the attack and had been shifted to a safe place before their departure to Islamabad,” said Mohammad Ali Gandapur, a senior provincial police officer.
In a late evening statement, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry reported that "the group of diplomats has returned safely to Islamabad.”
Separately, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office stated that he condemned the attack as a “cowardly terrorist” act.
Russian Ambassador Albert Khorev’s office in Islamabad confirmed his presence in the convoy, along with several other ambassadors, saying they took part in a tourism summit in Swat.
“On the way to the hotel from the town of Mingora in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa, an escort vehicle hit a mine. Several policemen were injured, [but] diplomats were not harmed,” the Russian embassy wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
No group claimed responsibility for Sunday’s rare attack in Swat, a former stronghold of the Terik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, an Islamist insurgent militant group waging deadly attacks against military and police forces in the province and elsewhere in the country.
Pakistani Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, a resident of Swat, was shot and seriously wounded by TTP militants in 2012, apparently in retaliation for her campaign to promote girls’ education in the largely conservative district. Malala was swiftly airlifted to Britain for treatment.
TTP’s intensified attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, have killed more than 100 police and an equal number of civilians since the start of the year.
Pakistan alleges that the extremist group is orchestrating the violence from Afghan sanctuaries and is being facilitated by Taliban rulers of the neighboring country.
The Taliban government in Kabul, which is officially not recognized by any country, rejects the allegations, saying no foreign group, including TTP, is being allowed to use Afghan soil against other countries.
