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Roadside bomb targeting police kills 4, wounds dozens in northwest Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle killed four people, including two officers, and wounded about two dozen others in restive northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border, police said.

The blast occurred in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police official Asghar Shah said.

The dead included two police officers and two passersby, he said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban government and has intensified its campaign against Pakistani security forces in recent years.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence that has deepened tensions with Afghanistan. Islamabad accuses the TTP of using Afghan territory as a safe haven since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, a charge the Afghan Taliban deny.

Beijing bans 4 New Zealand lawmakers from entering China because they visited Taiwan

By WTOP Staff
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Beijing banned four New Zealand lawmakers from traveling to China for a year and demanded they apologize because they visited Taiwan on a parliamentary trip, according to a message from the Chinese embassy conveyed via parliamentary officials and shown to The Associated Press on Thursday. China has hit lawmakers from other countries with sanctions related to contact with Taiwan before, but it's the first time for New Zealand parliamentarians, the government in Wellington said. Beijing has been increasing pressure in recent years on the democratically governed island that it claims as its own territory. Two lawmakers reached by the AP on Thursday rejected the demand for an apology, while the other two could not be immediately reached. New Zealand's government said it would express concern about the travel bans to Beijing. The elected officials visited Taipei in May, as New Zealand parliamentarians have done “for decades,” a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement.
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