Body of senior police officer’s son found in northwest Pakistan amid rising attacks against police

PESHAWAR: Police on Sunday recovered bullet-riddled body of the son of a senior police officer in a remote district of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, an official said, amid rising attacks against police personnel and their relatives in the restive region.
The body was recovered from a hillside on the outskirts of KP’s Dera Ismail Khan district, according to local police station in-charge Habibullah Khan. The deceased’s father, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Sayed Marjan, has been serving in the nearby Tank district.
The development comes amid deteriorating law and order situation and a surge in militant attacks as well as targeted killings of police personnel and their relatives, which have sparked widespread protests in the restive province that borders Afghanistan.
“The body of Muhammad Nauman, the son of DSP Sayed Marjan, was recovered from a hillside near Abdul Khel, a village on the outskirts of Dera Ismail Khan, this morning,” Khan told Arab News on Sunday. “There were several bullet marks on the victim’s body, which was shifted to hospital for postmortem.”
This is the second such incident this month. On Sept. 8, unidentified gunmen killed two brothers of a police official in the Lakki Marwat district of the province, police said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who have claimed a number of attacks in KP in recent months.
The attacks against police this month sparked protests in the Lakki Marwat and Bannu districts. According to official data, more than 80 policemen have been killed in attacks, ambushes and targeted killings in the province so far this year.
Last week, a roadside bomb hit a convoy of foreign diplomats visiting Swat, killing one police officer and injuring three others, officials said.
Officials in Islamabad say militants associated with the Pakistani Taliban are primarily responsible for violence in the region. Islamabad has even blamed Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers for “facilitating” anti-Pakistan groups, a charge Kabul denies.