Plainclothes police officers and rescue workers gather close to the site of a bomb explosion, in Kabal, an area of Pakistan's Swat Valley, on April 24.Sherin Zada/The Associated Press
Two explosions rocked a counterterrorism office in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 50, police said.
Provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat said it was not clear yet what caused the explosions in northwestern Swat valley, which was previously long controlled by Islamist militants before they were flushed out in a military operation in 2009.
The militants also shot at and wounded Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai in 2012 in the scenic valley, the birthplace of Mullah Fazlullah, the former chief of the Pakistani Taliban, who was killed in an air strike in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2018.
Most of those killed on Monday were police counterterrorism officers, Hayat said, adding a woman and her child who were passing by the building were also killed.
He said there was an old ammunition store in the office, and police were probing whether that caused the explosions or if it was a militant attack.
It is an unfortunate incident, regional chief of the counterterrorism department Sohail Khalid told reporters, saying that it apparently didn’t seem to be a suicide attack or a terrorism incident.
“There was a store where we had a huge quantity of weapons, and until now we believe that there might have some blast in it due to some carelessness” he said, adding, “We are keeping all our options open.”
No one has so far claimed responsibility.
The regional hospital administration said it received several wounded people, some of them in critical condition.
Live TV footage showed rescue officials and police rushing the bloodied wounded to the hospital.
A rescue official, Shafiqa Gul, said it was an old building and that parts of it had collapsed completely. “We fear there could be more casualties,” she said.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said police and other law enforcement agencies were probing to ascertain the cause of the explosions.