A police constable was shot dead by unknown assailants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu district on Thursday morning, police said.

Bannu’s District Police Officer (DPO) Saleem Abbas Kulachi told Dawn.com that the incident occurred in the Bacha Khan Chowk area of the district’s Domel tehsil.

“The police constable was on his way to arrive for duty when unknown armed motorcyclists opened fire on him,” Kulachi said.

The DPO added that the constable, Qadus Khan, was critically injured and taken to the Khaleefa Gul Nawaz (KGN) hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

The spokesperson for the Bannu regional police, Khanzala Quraishi, told Dawn.com that the constable was the guard of the Wazir sub-divisional police officer.

“After the incident, the station house officer of the Domel area went to the crime scene along with a team to investigate the incident,” Qureshi said.

DPO Kulachi, meanwhile, said that an operation against the ‘terrorists’ was underway in various locations of the district to eliminate the threat from the area.

He added that the funeral of the martyred police constable would be conducted later today.

Pakistan has witnessed an uptick in terror activities over the past year, especially in KP and Balochistan, after the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended its ceasefire with the government in November 2022 and vowed to target security forces, the police, and other law enforcement agencies.

Earlier this month, a police constable was martyred and ano­t­her seriously injured in a confrontation with three alleged terrorists at a police post in the Patesi Adda area of Mir Ali Tehsil, in the third attack on police personnel in the Bannu division that same week.

Meanwhile, in August, at least three Frontier Corps personnel and two policemen were martyred in separate incidents in Khyber Pakh­tun­khwa’s Upper Dir, Kohat, and Mohmand districts.