Ammunition explosions caused by a short circuit on Monday (April 24th) at a Pakistani counter-terrorism police station killed at least 12 people and injured 50, according to authorities who had initially mentioned a bomb attack.

The explosions "inside the police station" in Kabal, a town in the northwestern Swat Valley, caused "the total collapse of the building," according to Khalid Sohail, a police official with the local counter-terrorism department.

Swat police chief Shafi Ullah Gandapur told reporters the explosions were caused by a short circuit in a basement containing "grenades and other explosives." "There is no indication that they were provoked by an external attack or suicide bombers," he added.

A police official, Akhtar Hayat, had previously mentioned to AFP the explosion of "two or three bombs". According to him, a "majority of victims are police officers".

Precarious ceasefire

Since the beginning of the year, the Pakistani Taliban had been associated with two attacks on major police stations. In January, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque inside a police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing more than 80 officers as the building collapsed.

The following month, five people were killed when a commando from the TTP group, founded in 2007, stormed a police building in the southern city of Karachi, prompting an hours-long shootout. The TTP accuses the security forces of carrying out extrajudicial executions.

Pakistan has seen a dramatic increase in attacks since the Taliban took control of neighbouring Afghanistan in August.

Pakistani TTP militants have long controlled entire areas of northwestern Pakistan, including the Swat Valley. They were later routed by the army after an attack in 2014 that killed nearly 150 people, mostly students.

It was in the Swat Valley that 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the TTP in 2012 while advocating for girls' education, a campaign that later earned her the Nobel Peace Prize.

A precarious six-month ceasefire between the TTP and Islamabad was shattered in November.

With AFP

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