SOUTH WAZIRISTAN  -  At least one person was killed and five oth­ers sustained injuries following a remote-controlled bomb explo­sion near a mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s South Waziristan Dis­trict, police said on Sunday. The wounded have been shifted to the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital, Wana, after the bomb blast rocked Azam Warsak bazaar in the tribal dis­trict, the police added.

The martyred man was identified as Mufti Ejazul Haq while the wounded persons in­clude Saddam, Shah Hussain, Noor Hussain, Zain Ullah, and Maulana Shahzada Wazir.

Maulana Shahzada was seriously injured in the blast, and the condition of some of the injured is also critical, according to Deputy Medical Superin­tendent Dr Fazlur Rehman. The injured are being treated at the DHQ Hospital and an emergency has been declared in the hospital by the authorities.

Two injured were shifted to Dera Ismail Khan in critical condition for further treatment. Station House Officer (SHO) Usman Wazir of Azam War­sak Police Station confirmed the incident and stat­ed that unidentified persons had planted a remote controlled bomb near the mosque. The police have started investigating the incident..

Pakistan continues to battle militancy as terror­ist activities spiked across the country, especially in KP and Balochistan, since the Taliban takeover of bordering Afghanistan. As per a report issued by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), third quarter (July-September) of 2024 saw a sharp increase in fatalities of terrorist vio­lence and counter-terrorism campaigns, with a 90 percent surge in violence.

A total of 722 people were killed, including ci­vilians, security personnel, and outlaws, while 615 others were wounded in as many as 328 incidents recorded during the period under review.

Nearly 97 percent of these fatalities occurred in KP and Balochistan — marking the highest per­centage in a decade, and over 92 percent of these incidents of terror attacks and security forces’ op­erations were recorded in the same provinces.