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ISLAMABAD —Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Friday that suspected militants had ambushed and opened fire on a vehicle transporting a group of local judges, killing two police officers who were escorting them.
The deadly shooting took place in Tank, a militancy-hit district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. Area police officials said the attack also injured two of their personnel, but all three judges escaped unharmed.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Militants linked to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, a globally designated terrorist group, routinely target security forces and government officials in Tank and surrounding districts, killing dozens of people in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, unidentified attackers fired at a bulletproof vehicle transporting Pakistani staff of a United Nations development agency in Tank, but they escaped unharmed.
Pakistan maintains that the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, and militants linked to other anti-state groups have taken shelter and orchestrated cross-border attacks from sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan has hideouts and sanctuaries for terrorist groups, including the TTP, that continue to threaten Pakistan's security," Mumtaz Baloch, the Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson, reiterated Thursday at her weekly news conference.
"We urge Afghanistan to take immediate, effective, and robust action against these terror groups, especially the TTP, and to ensure that Afghan territory is not used as a staging ground for terrorism against Pakistan," Baloch stated.
Afghanistan's de facto Taliban government denies the presence of foreign militants in the country, saying it does not allow anyone to threaten neighboring countries, including Pakistan, from Afghan soil.
The United States and the United Nations have expressed concerns over the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan. They have identified Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, as the most serious regional threat.
"ISIS-K is a transnational terrorist network that has the ambition and capacity to launch international terrorist attacks," Vedant Patel, the U.S. State Department principal deputy spokesperson, told a news conference on Thursday. He used an acronym for the Afghan branch of the militant network.
Patel said that Washington is working to ensure Afghanistan "never serves as a launching pad" for terrorist attacks against the U.S. or its allies.
"We are cooperating with partners and allies, including in the immediate region, and we're working vigilantly to prevent the re-emergence of external threats from Afghanistan, including by working with partners to counteract terrorist recruitment efforts as well."
A recent U.N. report estimated that up to 6,500 TTP militants are based in Afghanistan and are being trained, as well as armed at al-Qaida-run camps there, leading to an increase in attacks in Pakistan.