Islamabad rocked by car bombing; Pakistan reports police officer dead

Islamabad, Dec 23, (dpa/GNA) – A car bomb hit Islamabad on Friday, killing one police officer and wounding three others, Pakistani officials said.

The driver fled the vehicle and detonated the explosives, after the car was intercepted by police officers, police official Mohamed Tanveer said.

The bombing, occurred days after Pakistani military commandos, killed 33 Taliban militants during an operation to free anti-terrorism police officers. who had been held hostage inside a prison compound.

Violence has surged in Pakistan, after months of peace talks between Islamabad and the Taliban militants, hiding in Afghanistan collapsed last month. Negotiation were being brokered by the Haqqani network of the Afghan Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban, who follow the same hardline interpretation of Sunni Islam as their Afghan counterparts, but have a different organization, have killed around 80,000 people in decades of violence.

They were pushed into Afghanistan in a series of offensive since 2014, but have been trying to recapture their former stronghold regions since the fall of Kabul to the Afghan Taliban last year.
GNA