At least 14 people were killed in a suicide bombing outside a police station in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday evening, officials said, the worst attack in a surge of militant violence that has reignited fears in a region once dominated by the Pakistani Taliban.
The attack took place in the Swat Valley, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, as residents and civil society activists gathered near the police station for a peace rally to protest the recent rise in attacks.
Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, said that police officers had “sacrificed their lives to stop the suicide bomber from entering the police station,” averting a much higher casualty toll.
Bilal Faizi, a spokesman for the provincial emergency service, said that at least 14 people had been declared dead at two hospitals in the district. He did not specify how many were police officers and how many were civilians.
An outlawed militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group has intensified attacks on security forces across the northwestern part of the country in recent years.
At least 112 members of Pakistan’s security forces were killed in militant attacks nationwide in July, the highest monthly toll since January 2023 and the second-highest in more than a decade, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based research organization.
The previous monthly high came in January 2023 when a suicide bombing at a mosque inside a police compound in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, killed more than 100 people, most of them police officers.
Pakistan has accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing sanctuary to leaders of the Pakistani Taliban who orchestrate attacks across the border. The Afghans deny the charge. While the two groups are organizationally separate, they have long maintained close ideological and operational ties.
The Swat Valley, a popular tourist destination, became the center of a brutal Taliban insurgency between 2007 and 2009. Militants seized control of much of the valley, imposed their interpretation of Islamic law, closed girls’ schools and carried out public executions.
The region drew global attention in 2012 when Taliban gunmen shot a teenage schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, who survived and went on to become the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Although Pakistan’s military drove militants from Swat in a major offensive in 2009, residents said a renewed militant presence in recent years had revived fears. They appeared to be borne out on Sunday.
“There was blood everywhere — people were screaming and crying,” said Shahid Alam, 28, a university student who attended Sunday’s peace rally.
“We want the government to stop militants from returning to our valley,” he said. “We do not want to go back to those dark days.”