Gunmen opened fire on an ambulance attending the scene of a suicide bomb attack at a roadside police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan that killed at least 12 people on Saturday and wounded about 35 others, officials said.
The attack involving an explosives-laden vehicle occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Bilal Faizi, a spokesman for the provincial emergency service. Local police chief Safdar Baloch said most of those killed and wounded were security personnel and passersby.
The blast destroyed the sprawling checkpoint, and witnesses said gunshots were also heard after the attack.
Faizi said gunmen opened fire on an ambulance as emergency crews transported victims to a nearby hospital, killing a rescue worker and wounding two others. Two women and a child were among those killed in the suicide bombing, he said.
The Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack. Pakistan has experienced a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it claimed by the TTP and the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist group primarily active in neighboring Balochistan province.
The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, which returned to power in 2021.
