Peshawar, Pakistan: At least 13 people were killed and over 50 were injured on Monday as a result of two explosions in a counterterrorism munitions stockpile in northwest Pakistan, according to the police.
The blasts shook the anti-terrorism office in the northwest Swat valley, which had long been under the hands of Islamist extremists before they were driven out in a military operation in 2009, according to provincial police head Akhtar Hayat.
In a subsequent statement, his spokesperson said that the fire started by the ammo was likely caused by an electrical short-circuit and that there hasn’t been any proof of an outside attack as of yet.
The Pakistani military and police maintain a sizable counterterrorism presence in the valley, which has been vulnerable to insurgency.
The militants also shot at and wounded Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai in 2012 in the scenic valley, the birthplace of Mullah Fazlullah, the former chief of the Pakistani Taliban, who was killed in an air strike in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2018.
Other aspects of the explosions are being investigated, the spokesman said.
Most of those killed in the blasts were police counter-terrorism officers, Hayat said, adding that a woman and her child who were passing by the building were also killed.
The regional chief of the counter-terrorism department Sohail Khalid told reporters that the explosions did not appear to be a suicide attack or other act of terrorism.
“There was a store where we had a huge quantity of weapons, and until now we believe that there might have some blast in it due to some carelessness” he said, adding, “We are keeping all our options open.”
A hospital administration said it received several wounded people for treatment, some of them in critical condition.
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