A car bomb detonated at the house of a Taliban militant in the Mir Ali area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday, killing two children and five suspected militants.
According to the police, the explosion took place before dawn when a man identified a local commander of the militants, Rasool Jan, was fitting a bomb in a car at his house. Police official Irfan Khan said other militants from the Pakistani Taliban group quickly arrived at the scene and removed the bodies of the insurgents who died. Authorities later found the bodies of two children in the rubble of the house, which collapsed after the explosion.
The blast badly damaged several nearby homes and wounded 14 people, including women. Some of the injured were in critical condition in a hospital, Khan said, but he did not provide details.
The Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents in the region often target security forces with assault rifles, rockets, grenades and suicide car bombings, and Khan said it appeared the car bomb was being prepared for such an attack.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, are separate from the Afghan Taliban but have been emboldened by the group’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.