Islam Abad, SANA-At least 17 people have been killed in two explosions at a counter-terrorism office in north-west Pakistan, officials say.<\/p>\n
Police said that there is no evidence of an attack and that it could have been as a result of an electrical fault igniting ammunition in the center.<\/p>\n
BBC reported that Most of the dead are police officers.<\/p>\n
The explosion happened in the Swat valley, which was controlled by Islamist militants before they were forced out in 2009.<\/p>\n
More than 50 people were injured and buildings have collapsed. Four of the dead are civilians.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for provincial police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which neighbors Afghanistan, said that ammunition caught fire, “most probably due to an electric short-circuit”.<\/p>\n
“No evidence of an attack from outside has been established so far.”<\/p>\n
The Pakistani Taliban group has carried out several attacks targeting security forces in recent months, but has not claimed involvement in these explosions.<\/p>\n
The regional chief of the counter-terrorism department Sohail Khalid told Reuters that the explosions did not appear to be an act of terrorism.<\/p>\n
“There was a store where we had a huge quantity of weapons, and until now we believe that there might have some blast in it due to some carelessness” he said. “We are keeping all our options open.”<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif initially called the blasts a “suicide attack”, but later tweeted that that “the nature of the blast is being investigated”.<\/p>\n
Pakistani counter-terrorist forces maintain a strong presence in the valley, which has been prone to insurgency.<\/p>\n
Mazen<\/p>\n
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Islam Abad, SANA-At least 17 people have been killed in two explosions at a counter-terrorism office in north-west Pakistan, officials say. Police said that there is no evidence of an attack and that it could have been as a result of an electrical fault igniting ammunition in the center. BBC reported that Most of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":306879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6987,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-arabic-international","category-latest-news","category-news-bar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/306879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}