28 Dead as the Security State Fights Over a Gold Mine

Ten police officers and 18 fighters are dead in Kohat district after gunmen opened fire on officers returning from an operation against illegal gold mining, according to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial police. The dead include a deputy superintendent of police and a sub-inspector. Twelve more police personnel were wounded. The Pakistani Taliban claimed the attack hours later.

That's the official count. Bloomberg reported a total toll of 28, and the number reflects a day in which armed men on every side were killing each other near a mine in the Gumbat area, also given as Gambat.

Who Has the Power

The operation that set this off wasn't a rescue or a relief mission. Police were enforcing a prohibition on illegal gold mining, which means they were guarding who gets to dig and who doesn't. A senior administrative official in Kohat told AFP that fighters set two police vehicles on fire, while two other police vehicles and one private vehicle were missing. Nobody in the official accounts says who was working that mine or what became of them.

The response was swift and predictable. A senior administrative official in the Orakzai area of Kohat said 10 fighters belonging to the Pakistan Taliban were killed in a separate operation in the district, and a large quantity of weapons was recovered. On Thursday, police killed a wanted TTP commander, Saifullah, in the Bara Sheikhhan area of Khyber district. K-P Inspector General of Police Zulfiqar Hameed called the officers who did it "an asset to the nation" and promised that operations would continue "until the country was cleared of the last terrorist."

Two police personnel sustained minor injuries in a grenade attack during that operation. Late Wednesday night, attackers rammed an explosives-laden pick-up truck into the main gate of Band Korai police station in Dera Ismail Khan, damaging the wall and a mosque. No casualties were reported.

Who Gets Crushed

The dead officers are rank-and-file men sent into the hills with rifles, and the list of recent dead reads like a casualty ledger. On Oct 8, Station House Officer Daud Khan and gunman Farhad were killed near the Karak-Kohat boundary. On Sept 28, three traffic police were killed in Tank district. On Sept 25, CTD Constable Muhammad Afaq was killed in Peshawar. On Sept 18, a blast and assault at Kohat Police Lines killed 15 police among 23 people.

The numbers climb every year. ACLED data show attacks in Pakistan rose nearly fourfold to 2,425 in 2025 from 658 in 2022. Security reports presented to the federal cabinet in October showed terrorist incidents in K-P rose 195 per cent between March 2024 and September 2026, with 73 per cent of 2026 attacks targeting police and security personnel.

The fighters killed Wednesday were also somebody's sons. Their deaths get a line in a wire story and a body count in a press release.

What They're Calling "Order"

Security forces say the violence emanates from Afghanistan, which the Taliban government in Kabul rejects. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power 5 years ago. Relations between Islamabad and Kabul worsened after deadly border clashes 1 year ago. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in fighting between the two countries in the last year, according to the UN mission in Afghanistan.

So two states trade blame across a border while the ones who die are constables, fighters, and civilians who never had a say in either capital's calculations. The pattern holds: more operations, more attacks, more funerals, and the same promise from the top that the next operation will finally end it. The numbers say otherwise. Every year of the escalation has been a year of that promise.