By Asif Shahzad
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) -Islamist militants in Pakistan have started using commercially acquired quadcopter drones to drop bombs on security forces in the country’s northwest, police said, a potentially dangerous development in the volatile region.
The use of such drones, which are powered by four rotors allowing for vertical take-off and landing, is worrying the overstretched and under-equipped police force, the frontline against militant attacks, officials said.
Two quadcopters sent by the militants targeted a police station earlier this month, killing a woman and injuring three children in a nearby house in Bannu district, said police officer Muhammad Anwar.
A drone spotted over another police station on Saturday was shot down with assault rifles, he said. It was armed with a mortar shell, he said.
At least eight such drone attacks have targeted police and security forces in Bannu and adjacent areas in the last two and a half months, he said.
Regional police chief Sajjad Khan said militants were still trying to master the use of the drones.
“The militants have acquired these modern tools, but they are in the process of experimentation and that’s why they can’t hit their targets accurately,” he added.
The militants are using the quadcopters to drop improvised explosive devices or mortar shells on their targets, five security officials said. They said these explosive devices were packed with ball bearings or pieces of iron.
Provincial police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the police lacked resources to meet the new challenge.
“We do not have equipment to counter the drones,” he told the local Geo News channel on Sunday. “The militants are better equipped than we are,” he said.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the drone strikes.
The main militant group operating in the northwest is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban. But they denied using the drones.
“We are trying to acquire this technology,” a TTP spokesman told Reuters.
In 2024, Islamist militants carried out 335 countrywide attacks, killing 520 people, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent organisation.
In recent weeks, thousands of residents from the border region have staged protests, aimed against both the attacks by militants and what they fear is an offensive planned by the army, according to a statement issued by the demonstrators.
They said they feared that a military operation against the militants would displace them from their homes.
A sweeping operation against militants in 2014 was preceded by a forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents. They spent months, and in many cases years, away from their homes.
Pakistan’s army did not respond to a request for comment on whether an operation was planned.
(Reporting by Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar; writing and reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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