Deadly Suicide blast at local court in Charsadda kills eight, injures 11

Deadly Suicide blast at local court in Charsadda kills eight, injures 11

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At least eight people including two policemen were martyred and 11 others were injured in a suicide blast in the premises of a local court in Charsadda district in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, DPO Charsadda Khalid Sohail told Dunya News. According to the Regional Police Officer (RPO), the incident occurred in Tehsil Kachehri near Shabqadar bazaar.

The attacker was intercepted by a policeman stationed at the court gate as he was attempting to enter the court premises. Several nearby vehicles caught fire soon after the explosion.Rescue officials and a contingent of security forces arrived at the scene and cordoned off the area. The injured persons were shifted to nearby hospitals.

According to DPO Charsadda, four of the injured are in critical condition who are being shifted to Peshawar.

Earlier on January 20, heavily-armed militants stormed Bacha Khan University (BKU) campus in the same district, gunning down students and teachers in a bloody rampage before they were killed by the military.

Among the 21 victims was a chemistry professor who students said fired his own pistol at the militants before he died in a hail of bullets.

Teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were given permission to carry firearms after the Tehreek-e-Taliban massacred more than 150 people, the majority of them children, at a school in the provincial capital Peshawar in 2014.

Pakistan has been fighting a homegrown insurgency since 2004, when militants displaced by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began a campaign in border tribal areas.

Three years later the umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group was formed.

Overall levels of violence have fallen since a concerted military push against the Taliban’s bases began in 2014, and last year saw the fewest casualties among civilians and security forces since 2007.

But the threat of attacks, particularly on “soft targets” like schools and government offices, remains.