Twin roadside bombings kill seven in northwest Pakistan

Two remote-controlled roadside bombs ripped through Bannu on Saturday, killing at least seven people and wounding three in a district already at the center of Pakistan’s borderlands violence. The second blast hit as rescuers and bystanders rushed to the scene, turning an attack on a vehicle into a double tragedy.

Senior police official Yasir Afridi said five people were killed in the first explosion and two more died in the second. The initial blast targeted a vehicle in Bannu Wazir subdivision’s Marka Bera and Marka Pira area, with one account saying the vehicle, a Datsun pickup carrying passengers toward Domel, was destroyed.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion was expected to fall on Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has carried out similar attacks across the region. The group is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban but allied to it, and Pakistani officials say many TTP fighters and leaders have found sanctuary across the border, a claim that has kept tensions high between Islamabad and Kabul.

The attack underscored how roadside bombs remain a favored tactic in northwest Pakistan despite repeated counterterrorism operations. They are cheap, easy to conceal, and, in this case, effective twice over: first against the intended target and then against the people who came to help. That pattern has made ordinary commuters, passersby and rescue workers the most exposed in a security landscape where violence often reaches its deadliest moments after the first explosion.

President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack and expressed condolences to the victims’ families, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also denounced the bombing. Pakistan’s state broadcaster and the president’s office said Zardari warned that internal and external handlers of terrorism were providing safe havens, logistical support and financial assistance to militant networks.

The Bannu blast landed in a province that remains one of Pakistan’s most volatile. Security summaries in 2026 have described Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former FATA districts as the epicenter of militant violence, and the area has seen repeated bloodshed in recent years, including the July 15, 2024 assault on Bannu Cantonment that killed eight soldiers and injured more than 140 people. Pakistan’s military said it killed 26 militants in border strikes along Afghanistan on June 10, a reminder that the fighting along this frontier continues to spill across districts where the state’s reach is still contested.