Pakistani troops have killed 12 Taliban fighters in a firefight near the border with Afghanistan , the Pakistani army announced, quoted by DPA.
This comes just a week after the deadly attack on a mosque near the police headquarters in the same area.
The shooting took place at night in the area of Laki Marwat settlement. Pakistani troops stormed a hideout used by the militants where they were believed to be planning another attack, the army said in a statement.
There were no casualties on the Pakistani side, the army added.
The incident comes just a week after a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up at a mosque, frequented by police, in the northwestern city of Peshawar. As a result of the attack, at least 84 people died.
The bombing, which was the deadliest in years, prompted a strong response from Pakistani authorities. The local Pakistani police chief vowed to “pursue the attackers wherever they are hiding”.
A Pakistani delegation is expected to visit Kabul to seek support from the Afghan government against Taliban militants who are said to be operating from hideouts in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which follows the same hardline interpretation of Sunni Islam as the Afghan Taliban but has a different organization, has killed around80,000 people in the decades-long violence.
Since 2014, they have been pushed out of their fortified areas along the border with Afghanistan in a series of offensives, but are trying to regroup after the fall of power in Kabul to the Afghan Taliban, DPA recalls.
