5 Pakistani customs officials shot dead in NW Pakistan

Five customs officials have been shot dead in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials say.

The deadly shooting occurred at around midnight in the provincial city of Kohat located some 80 kilometres southwest of the provincial capital, Peshawar, officials said on Wednesday.

“Three gunmen fired at the customs team indiscriminately. Four officials died on the spot and another succumbed to his injuries in hospital later,” said Sohaib Ashraf, district police chief in Kohat.

He said that the identity of the attackers is not known yet.

Confirming the incident, a customs department official said, “It was a terrorist attack on our team.”

The semi-autonomous tribal regions on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan have been a hideout for Takfiri militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, during the past years.

Uniformed government officials and customs officials are often targeted by the Takfiri militant groups and criminal gangs.

Pakistan has intensified its anti-terror campaign against militant groups following a December 16, 2014 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, which claimed the lives of more than 140 people, 134 of them children.

The Pakistani army started military operations against militant hideouts in North Waziristan in June 2014, after a deadly raid on the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi ended the government’s faltering peace talks with pro-Taliban militants.

This comes as Pakistan’s ISI is known as the main supporter of the militants like Taliban.