KARACHI, Pakistan – Armed men killed four aid workers in an ambush in northwest Pakistan’s district of North Waziristan on Monday, police officials said, an attack that could signal a revival of the insurgency in the Afghan border region that has already it was a stronghold of Pakistan’s Taliban.
A vehicle carrying humanitarian workers, all Pakistani and affiliated with a domestic skills development program for women, was targeted by unidentified assailants in the city of Mir Ali, police said.
The four aid workers, all women, were killed and the male driver was injured. A fifth aid worker, also a woman, survived the attack by taking refuge in a nearby house, the police statement said. The attackers fled to the nearby mountains.
Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission condemned the attack and demanded that the government bring the attackers to justice.
“It is the authorities ‘responsibility to protect citizens’ lives and property at all costs,” the commission said in a statement.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the ambush. But the shooting fits into a pattern of attacks against humanitarian workers and anti-polio doctors across the country, which authorities attributed to the Taliban in Pakistan.
Waziristan was the center of the insurgent group for years, until strong momentum from the Pakistani military around 2014 freed most of the militants, bringing an appearance of security to the region. Analysts and residents now fear that several factions of the Pakistani Taliban who sought shelter from military operations in neighboring Afghanistan’s provinces have regrouped.
Frequent reports of targeted killings of tribal elders, roadside bomb attacks and clashes with security forces have raised fears that the region, which had tribal status before fully integrating with the rest of Pakistan through legislation in 2018 , will return to militant control.
Mohsin Dawar, elected member of Parliament from North Waziristan and leader of an ethnic Pashtun movement that seeks equal rights, wrote on Twitter, “The wave of indiscriminate murders continues unabated in our region, with no end in sight.”
“Where is the State?” he asked.
In a separate attack, five soldiers were killed and another wounded when militants attacked a security checkpoint in South Waziristan on Thursday night, according to the Pakistani military.
The Pakistani Taliban, in a statement, took responsibility for the attack, saying the military unit was conducting an active operation against the group in the region.
The military also said two militants and a military man were killed during a search operation on Friday night.
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a research organization based in Islamabad, said the increase in attacks in former tribal districts was a cause of concern for national security. But, he added, militants may not be able to regain their former strengths because security forces continue to actively hunt them down.
“The reunification of the Pakistani Taliban has posed a threat in former tribal districts, but now they are not in a position to gain the strength they had before 2014,” said Rana.
The death of the four aid workers has also renewed fears about security among charity groups and humanitarian organizations working in Pakistan, especially in the former tribal districts.
A humanitarian worker in the tribal areas, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that both the government and militants had seen him and others working for suspected aid groups since the attack on Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in the city of Abbottabad in 2011. The United States intelligence service reportedly ran a false vaccination campaign in the area to collect DNA samples to confirm bin Laden’s presence.
The aid worker said the recent attack would again force humanitarian organizations to rethink their security measures and decide whether they could continue to work in the former tribal areas.