PESHAWAR: A member of the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) police was martyred on Tuesday while defusing an improvised explosive device (IED) inside an abandoned police post in Peshawar’s Hassan Khel subdivision, police said.

According to the police, the post in the Faqeeri Banr area of Hassan Khel had been abandoned and was lying vacant. Terrorists had detonated one IED inside the post and left another unexploded.

“It was a vacant post and terrorists had already detonated one IED inside it, but they left another unexploded. A BDU member, Khaisat Rehman, who had travelled from the provincial capital, was attempting to defuse the second IED when it exploded,” a senior police official told Dawn.

He said the area was immediately cordoned off and a search operation was launched.

Hassan Khel, located about 50 miles south of the provincial capital, has witnessed a surge in terrorist attacks on law enforcement agencies over the past four years.

On July 1, a woman was killed and six others of the same family were injured when a suspected drone strike took place in Pastawana—a village located up in the mountainous terrain of Hassan Khel subdivision.

Sources in the area stated that the suspected strike, which targeted a house, had initially left seven persons wounded; a woman later succumbed to injuries while being shifted to the hospital, adding that the victims were immediately shifted to Shamshato Hospital located on the border between Peshawar and Nowshera districts, where four persons, having sustained minor injuries, were discharged.

On June 9, six Federal Constabulary (FC) personnel were martyred and four were injured while responding to an attempt by terrorists to capture a post in the Hassan Khel area. Eight terrorists were also been killed in retaliatory action, and the attempt to capture the post was foiled.