Suicide bomber attacks peace protest in Pakistan

Other international agencies, such as AP and AFP, reported up to 14 deaths and more than 20 injuries this Sunday. The Swat Valley encompasses the hometown of Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who was shot by the Taliban in the region in 2012.

According to Swat police spokesman Nasir Iqbal, the attack took place at around 6 pm (local time) in front of the police station in Kabal, a city in the Swat Valley. “Seven people, including police officers, died and 18 were injured in the explosion,” Iqbal told EFE.

Around a thousand people participated in the peace demonstration in the region that has faced militant attacks for years. The protest brought together a large number of protesters from across the district, according to the local outlet Dawn News. The attack occurred while the last speaker of the event was speaking to the crowd, which generated panic among those present.

Pakistan has more than three thousand terrorist incidents in 2026

The increase in attacks in Pakistan in recent years is directly associated, according to the country’s government, with the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Since then, Pakistani authorities have publicly held both the Afghan government and India responsible for, according to them, offering support to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — the so-called Pakistani Taliban — and to Baloch insurgent groups operating in the country’s territory, an accusation denied by Kabul and New Delhi, according to EFE.

The scale of the problem appears in the numbers collected by the Pakistani Army: in 2026 alone, Pakistan has already recorded more than 3,100 incidents related to terrorism, including 28 suicide bomb attacks.

Almost all cases are concentrated in two provinces, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (62.7% of the total) and Baluchistan (36.5%) — precisely where the Swat district is located, the scene of this Sunday’s attack.

In a statement to EFE, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations of the Pakistan Armed Forces, stated that 819 Pakistanis have already died this year in episodes linked to terrorism — an average of four deaths per day.

Of this total, according to Sharif, around 500 victims belonged to security forces, and 322 were civilians.