Pakistan Army’s battalion headquarters in North Waziristan breached by suicide bombers, videos viral on internet

Not long after the Pakistani media confirmed a militant attack on a military installation in North Waziristan’s Boya on Friday, videos claiming to be of the attack flooded the internet. The viral videos, which THE WEEK could not independently verify, showed smoke and fumes billowing from the mountainous Boya terrain following the attack.

As per reports by the Pakistani media, five militants managed to infiltrate the battalion headquarters of the security forces in the Boya area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s North Waziristan before being neutralised. Four security personnel suffered injuries while engaging the militiamen, Dawn said in a report.

While media reports claimed that the attack was executed by Fitna-al-Khawarij—a term that the state has designated for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—netizens attributed it to an organisation called Aswad ul Harb Ishtihsadi. According to available information, the Aswad ul Harb Ishtihsadi group is not directly linked to the TTP or the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and specialises in economic sabotage. The group is primarily active in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces.

They reportedly managed to breach the military setup after a vehicle was rammed into the fence of the heavily guarded facility by a suicide bomber. This gave a window for the rest of the infiltrators to enter the headquarters and engage security forces.

The blast was so powerful that its echoes reverberated as far as Miranshah city, located nearly 25 kilometres away from the facility, Dawn said. However, only the outer wall of the battalion headquarters was partially damaged in the attack, and the sole surviving terrorist has been surrounded by the Pakistan Army.