Pakistan: Four policemen were killed by a roadside bomb as they scrambled to protect a police station under siege by Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan, officials said Thursday.

Pakistan has witnessed rising attacks by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) since the Afghan Taliban retook Kabul in 2021, and police are increasingly on the frontline of Islamabad’s bid to quell the movement.

TTP fighters launched a heavy-weapons assault early Thursday on a police station in Lakki Marwat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which abuts the border with Afghanistan.

Four officers, including a deputy superintendent, were killed by a bomb as they rushed towards the fight in a “planned act of terrorism”, senior local police official Muhammad Ashfaq told AFP.

Deputy superintendent Iqbal Mohmand was known as an “exceptional poet”, Ashfaq said. “He was always the centre of attention during poetic festivals,” he said.

The TTP claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Thursday and accused Mohmand of “brutally” killing its fighters. It said there were no TTP casualties.

The TTP is a separate movement from the Afghan Taliban, however they share a common lineage and ideology.

Senior local administration official Tariqullah, who goes by one name, said the bomb pierced the armoured personnel carrier that was carrying the officers around 3 kilometres from the police station.

Five officers at the station, as well as the driver of the personnel carrier, were wounded, Tariqullah said.

The TTP have long targeted law enforcement officials, who they accuse of conducting extrajudicial executions.

They controlled swaths of northwest Pakistan at the height of their power but were largely routed by the military after a 2014 school raid that killed nearly 150 people, mostly pupils.