According to police, unidentified assailants started firing during which a suicide bombing took place and a second massive explosion occurred within seconds as a result of which houses were damaged up to an area of two km.
The building of the police station has been completely destroyed due to the blasts, the police added.
Police said an emergency has been declared in Saidu Sharif Hospital where injured were being shifted.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa caretaker Chief Minister Muhammad Azam Khan condemned the blasts and offered his heartfelt condolences to the families of the martyrs.
He also directed the authorities concerned to immediately start relief operation and provide timely medical aid to the injured.
He termed the incident “highly condemnable and a brutal act”
Sharifullah Khan, a police official in Kabal, told Al Jazeera that at least 12 people died in the blasts on Monday at the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Swat Valley while more than 50 were reported injured.
He added that he doesn’t believe the blasts were caused by “terrorism”. The “explosions occurred after explosive material in the CTD building’s basement caught fire”, he said.
The building complex also houses the Kabal district police station and headquarters of a reserve police force, but the main damage was done at the counterterrorism department building.
Provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat said there was an old ammunition store in the office, and police were probing whether that caused the explosions or if it was an attack.
Two attacks on large police bases have been linked to the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) since the start of the year.
Most of those killed on Monday were police counterterrorism officers, Hayat said, adding that a woman and her child who were passing by the building were also killed.
Bilal Faizi, spokesman for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial rescue service, said the search for more wounded was still in its initial stages.
The regional hospital administration said it received several wounded people, some of them in critical condition.
Dramatic uptick in attacks
In January, a suicide bomber detonated his vest in a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing more than 80 officers as the building collapsed and rained down rubble on worshippers.
The following month, five were killed when a TTP suicide squad stormed a police compound in the southern port city of Karachi, prompting an hours-long shootout.
The TTP have long targeted law enforcement officials, who they accuse of conducting extrajudicial executions.
Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic uptick in attacks focused on its border regions with the country. Islamabad says offensives are being launched from Afghan soil.
The TTP was founded in 2007, when Pakistani militants fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan splintered off to focus attacks on Islamabad as payback for supporting the United States invasion after the 9/11 attacks.
They controlled swaths of northwest Pakistan including the Swat Valley at the height of their power, but were largely routed by the military after a 2014 school raid that killed nearly 150 people, mostly pupils.
The Swat Valley was also where then-15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the TTP in 2012 while lobbying for girls’ education, a campaign that later earned her the Nobel Peace Prize
A shaky six-month ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad failed in November.In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the explosions at the CTD police station in Kabal and expressed regret over the loss of precious lives.
He also sought a report on the incident from authorities concerned.
“The entire nation salutes the sacrifices of the martyrs. Security forces and the police will root out the menace of terrorism,” the premier was quoted as saOne hundred and twenty-nine police personnel embraced martyrdom and 232 others sustained injuries in different militant attacks across the province during the first quarter of 2023. A total of 25 cases of militant attacks have been registered with the police during the three months, police data shows.
According to the data, 15 militant attacks were reported against police in January 2023, in which 116 personnel embraced martyrdom and 189 were injured.
Three militant attacks were reported in February 2023, in which two police personnel embraced martyrdom and five others were wounded.
Seven cases were registered by the police in March 2023, wherein seven policemen embraced martyrdom and 18 others were wounded.
Meanwhile, a senior police official told Dawn that following a surge in attacks on the police in January after the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) called off the ceasefire, the police were equipped with latest weaponry, leading to reduction in the number of attacks in February and March.
“There were fewer attacks reported in February and March,” the police official said, adding the force was carrying out intelligence-based operations and hunting down the militants.
Of the 129 personnel, who embraced martyrdom during last three months, 84 personnel, including officers, laid down their lives on January 30 alone when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque at Peshawar’s police headquarters.
On November 28, 2022, the banned TTP had called off the ceasefire agreed with the government in June
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