Motorcycle bomb at police station kills at least 2 and wounds several in northwestern Pakistan

Volunteers transport an injured victim of a bomb explosion upon arrival at a hospital in Bannu, northwestern Pakistan, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ammad Khattak)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Explosives rigged to a parked motorcycle ignited near the gate of a police station in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least two people, including a child, and wounding several others, police said. Elsewhere, a security checkpoint was attacked by a suicide bomber.

The first assault took place in Bannu, a district in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, local police official Fida Mohammad said.

He said the dead and wounded were taken to a nearby hospital but provided no additional details. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban.

Hours later, an explosives-laden vehicle driven by a suicide bomber and accompanied by a group of fighters exploded while approaching a security checkpoint in the northwestern Bajaur district, a local police official, Zafar Khan, said. He said troops returned fire, killing at least eight Khawarij, a term that Pakistan uses for members of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

A girl was killed when the roof of a nearby house collapsed because of the impact of the blast, Khan said. Police said rescuers were still removing the rubble of the security post to rescue anyone trapped under it.

Khan said three officers were wounded when part of the checkpoint collapsed. He provided no further details.

Pakistan has seen a surge in violence in recent years, with the government frequently blaming the outlawed TTP. The group is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban who returned to power in 2021. The increase in attacks has strained relations between Islamabad and Kabul, as Pakistan accuses the TTP of operating freely inside Afghanistan, a charge both the TTP and Kabul deny.

The Associated Press