At least 24 people, including women and children, died in a terrible explosion in the Tirah Valley in Khyber district on Monday, police said.
According to police, bomb-making tools were stored in a complex where Pakistani Taliban insurgents lived blew up, destroying surrounding homes in the mountainous terrain along the Afghan border.
Local police said that the blast occurred near sunrise and had produced a trail of rubble through the village, where rescuers searched for survivors amidst the remains. Police added that at least 14 of the dead were suspected militants and 10 were civilians, though those numbers would fluctuate as new information became available.
The Pakistan Air Force had carried out a late-night raid that killed some 30 civilians, with Chinese-made JF-17 jets dropping precision-guided bombs, reported by Some local news media and social media posts . This caused a lot of misunderstanding. Local officials quoted in other publications refuted these claims, and the police said again that the deaths were caused by an explosion at an insurgent position that wasn’t planned. By Monday afternoon, there was still no independent confirmation of an airstrike.
The Tirah Valley has long been a bastion of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militants, and the wider Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has seen a sudden surge in violence this year. The leading Pakistani conflict-monitoring group reported that August had 143 militant attacks nationwide, the highest monthly figure in more than a decade. Provincial counterterror statistics tallied independently 605 terrorist attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the first eight months of 2025.
There was no immediate public response on Monday’s bombing from Pakistan’s military. Casualty counts in the northwest are subject to change as officials reach remote locations and families identify missing persons.
(With inputs from agencies)
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