The attack was on a school being used as a military outpost in the Draban region of Dera Ismail Khan, in Pakistan’s lawless northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region — long a stronghold for the local version of the Taliban. Fighters then attacked the compound.
The attack was claimed by Tehreek-e-Jihad, a little-known group analysts say is an offshoot of the Taliban or at least an ally. Social media accounts for the Taliban, which has been battling the Pakistani government for more than a decade, have carried the group’s statements.
“Our suicide bombers attacked a military compound at 2:30 a.m. and started killing soldiers one by one. An army camp is set up in a school. More than 20 soldiers were killed in the attack,” Mohammed Qassim, the group’s spokesman, said in a statement.
A video released by the group purportedly shows the early phases of the attack with snipers shooting what it describes as Pakistani soldiers at the outpost.
Pictures from the scene showed collapsed buildings and several badly burned bodies said to be of the attackers, as well as their explosive belts. The army statement said that “sanitization operations” were underway to uncover any further terrorist presence in the area. A curfew has been declared, meanwhile, and the local market and school have been closed.
Once believed to be largely defeated, the Pakistani Taliban has been responsible for a resurgence of attacks, especially in the past few months, in the wake of their Afghan counterparts’ seizure of power next door.
Many of the attacks appear to originate from Afghanistan, though the Afghan Taliban denies it is providing a haven for the Pakistani militants.
In the first half of 2023, militant attacks in Pakistan soared by 80 percent, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, with the Pakistani Taliban assumed to be involved in most cases.
Paul Schemm in London contributed to this report.