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No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as , or TTP, which has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces in the region in recent months.

Hours earlier, Pakistan’s military said security forces had killed 32 militants in intelligence-based operations carried out over the previous 24 hours in northwestern and southwestern Pakistan.

in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP, a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation that Kabul denies.