Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days after India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar reminded Pakistan of US leader Hillary Clinton’s remarks—that rearing snakes in your backyard does not mean they will bite only your neighbors; they will turn on you also—is now haunting Islamabad.
For, the Taliban terrorists, whom Pakistan so carefully reared since the 1990s, on Sunday seized a police station in northwest Pakistan, freed fellow terrorists, and took several hostages, the media reported on Monday.
The incident occurred at the Bannu cantonment in Pakistan’s restive Khaibar Pakhtunkhwa province, where the Taliban extremists seized a police station. It was not immediately known if they had released any captive person or were overpowered by security personnel.
In a video they released from inside the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) compound, they claimed they took nine police personnel hostage and demanded safe passage to Afghanistan by air in order to release the captured people.
Police officials said that Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorists, with support from the Afghanistan-ruling Taliban, sneaked into the Bannu cantonment and freed imprisoned wanted terrorists. Then they took control of a section of the compound, taking CTD personnel hostage.
“It’s not clear if the armed terrorists attacked from outside, or they snatched the ammunition from staff inside” while being interrogated following their arrest, Bannu police spokesperson Mohammad Naseem said.
Pakistan Army troops were immediately deployed and security forces surrounded the compound.
The incident took place hours after militants attacked a police station in Lakki Marwat bordering the South Waziristan tribal district early Sunday morning, leaving four police officers dead and as many injured.
In November, the TTP, which is demanding the imposition of the Sharia law across Pakistan, called off a ceasefire agreed upon with the Pakistan government in June and ordered its militants to stage terrorist attacks across the country.