Police foil suspected suicide attack in Lakki Marwat as two militants are killed and a third escapes
Police in Lakki Marwat killed two suspected militants, including a suspected suicide bomber, after stopping a suspicious car at Gandi Chowk, foiling what officers described as a major planned attack.
Police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa say they have foiled a suspected major terrorist attack in Lakki Marwat district, killing two suspected militants, including a suspected suicide bomber, during an exchange of fire on Wednesday.
The encounter took place at Gandi Chowk in Sarai Naurang tehsil, after police received information about a suspicious vehicle in the area. Officers and members of a local peace committee moved to intercept the car, which had tinted windows, and the people inside opened fire when they saw the security personnel, according to police accounts reported by ARY News and other outlets.
Police returned fire, killing two of the vehicle’s occupants. A third suspect was wounded but managed to escape in the confusion, and a search operation was immediately launched to track him down. Heavy contingents of police and the Counter Terrorism Department reached the scene soon afterwards and cordoned off the area.
Officers searched the vehicle and recovered weapons and ammunition, a flag associated with the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, women’s burqas and other suspicious items, UrduPoint reported, citing police. The bodies of the two men killed were taken into custody and the process of identifying them began, while investigators started work on establishing what target the group may have been planning to attack.
Inspector General of Police Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Zulfiqar Hameed praised the Lakki Marwat police for their timely action, commending the personnel for risking their lives to protect the public. Reports said rewards were announced for the team involved, and the district police officer said militants would not be allowed to re-establish a presence in the district.
Lakki Marwat, in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has repeatedly been hit by militant violence in recent years, with police, peace-committee members and civilians among the targets. The district sits close to areas where security forces have stepped up intelligence-based operations, and Wednesday’s operation followed the pattern of recent actions there: a tip about suspicious movement, a rapid local response, and then a wider search once the initial exchange ended.
The incident also underlines the strain on policing in the province at a moment when security personnel are heavily deployed elsewhere as well. The same day, police guarding polio vaccination teams were attacked in other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, an episode already covered on this site, and a separate report said three police personnel were injured in a drone attack on a police station in Tank. The Lakki Marwat operation was a separate, intelligence-led action, not part of those incidents.
For residents, the immediate question is whether the escaped suspect is caught quickly. Police said the search operation was continuing in and around Gandi Chowk, with additional units deployed and checkpoints in place. Officers have appealed for information from the public, while warning people to stay away from the immediate scene while the search continues.
What happens next will depend on the identification of the two men killed and on what investigators recover from the vehicle and from any communications or documents linked to it. If the group is confirmed to have been planning a suicide attack, police are likely to widen the operation to trace facilitators and any support network in the district.
For now, police say the immediate threat from that vehicle has been removed, but the search for the third suspect remains open and the investigation into the group’s plans is continuing.
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