Police in Pakistan say a suicide bomber has attacked a vehicle carrying a deputy commander of police in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing one person and wounding three others.

Peshawar police chief Mian Muhammad Saeed says the deputy commander, Malik Tariq, was among those wounded in Thursday’s attack.

He says the attacker was riding on a motorcycle and blew himself up as Tariq’s vehicle passed through Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan.

Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility and warned of more attacks. The militant group has spent more than a decade fighting to overthrow the government and replace it with a hard-line Islamic state.

About 46 militants have been killed in operations and clashes with Afghan army forces in different provinces within the last 24 hours, the country’s Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

“A total of 46 terrorists were killed, 36 others wounded and two terrorists were captured during military operations over the past 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.

The statement also confirmed losing eight army soldiers as a result of landmine blasts and clashes with the militants within the same period.

Furthermore, eight militants were killed following a clash with Afghan border police personnel in Shakin district of eastern Paktika province overnight Tuesday, the provincial government said in a statement earlier on Wednesday.

In addition, an airstrike carried out by NATO-led forces destroyed a militants’ ammunition and explosive material cache in Paktika’s Nika district last night, according to the statement.

The Taliban militant group has yet to make comments.

The Taliban-led violence continues in Afghanistan. Afghan security forces have pressed on clearing the militants in restive provinces as they assumed the full security charges from NATO-led troops since Jan. 1.

10 militants have been killed in two separate airstrikes in eastern Nangarhar province.

The airstrikes have been conducted in Lal Pur District since yesterday.

Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal, spokesman for the police headquarters of Nangarhar province says that one attack was carried out in Samso area leaving seven insurgents killed around 02:00 PM yesterday.

He said a “Saracha” vehicle in which three militants were traveling was targeted the second attack leaving all three on board killed.

Two of the three killed are identified as Sharifullah and Shirzad but the identity of the third one is unknown.

Also, security forces in Jalalabad city have arrested Kochai alias Sangarai who was the shadow district governor of insurgents in Surkh Rod District.

Mashriqiwal says that Kochai had brought a vehicle for maintenance in Jalalabad city when security forces detained him.

Another person by the name of Zarwali who was accompanying Kochai was also arrested in the raid.

Three youths from Karnataka, including two from Bengaluru, have died fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

A recent Intelligence Bureau (IB) report from Delhi has confirmed they joined the terror group a couple of years ago, and died in Iraq and Syria.

The report identified them as Faiz Masood of Cooke Town, Umar Subhan of Shivaji Nagar (both in Bengaluru) and Abdul Khuddus Turki of Vijayapura in north Karnataka. All three died during coalition strikes against the ISIS, the report stated.

While Faiz left India for Qatar and subsequently Syria in September 2013, after having applied for a passport in July the same year, Umar travelled to Yemen in 2008, and later joined the ISIS.

The report states that Faiz, after reaching Syria, joined the ISIS. He was one of about 12,000 recruits from 81 countries. Sources tracking the jihadis from India said Turki was also among them. According to intelligence inputs, he travelled to Saudi Arabia in July 2014 and subsequently left for Iraq to join the ISIS.

Bengaluru Homes

Express visited the houses of Faiz and Umar in Bengaluru on Tuesday. While Umar’s family has been evicted from the building for not paying rent for almost 15 years, members of Faiz’s family refused to speak to the reporter.

“I do not want to talk about him (Faiz). I do not want any news about him. There is nothing to discuss further,” said a man at the house.

The Karnataka youths went to the war zone much before Bengaluru police arrested alleged ISIS propagandist Mehdi Masroor Biswas in December last year. The state intelligence department and Bengaluru police have no clue about their movements or their death.

“We recently received reports from Central agencies about two or three youths who died fighting for the ISIS. We have no confirmation they were from Karnataka,” a senior officer with the state intelligence told Express.

Coastal Link: Another recruit from south India — Abu Tahir from Palakkad — has also reportedly died fighting in the terror zones of Syria and Iraq. Agencies had earlier confirmed that Sultan Armar, a former Indian Mujahideen operative-turned-ISIS recruit from Bhatkal, may also have been killed in Kobane while fighting alongside the ISIS. Among 11 Indian ISIS recruits identified by the intelligence agencies, four were learnt to be from Karnataka. Areeb Majeed, a recruit from Maharashtra, chose to return to India after he sustained injuries in Iraq and Syria. However, sources believe at least five Indians remain in ISIS-dominated territories.

Optimistic View: Indian intelligence agencies believe the influence of ISIS is waning. “It is clear that their propaganda doesn’t appeal to Indian youth. The few who joined them are believed to be on the way out. Majeed, who returned to India, told interrogators that the ground reality was the mirror opposite of ISIS propaganda,” said a source.

Biswas Case: The news about the death of Indian youths in Iraq and Syria comes days after the City Crime Branch (CCB) filed a chargesheet against Masroor Mehdi Biswas, a resident of Bengaluru, who was allegedly tweeting in favour of ISIS.

The chargesheet, filed under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 on June 1, contains about 36,500 pages and 1.22 lakh tweets.

An American citizen has been killed in a rocket attack in Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan’s Parwan province.

54-year-old Krissie K. Davis was working for Defense Department’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) was from Talladega of Alabama state.

Davis was working at the agency’s disposition services unit which includes the destruction, sale or other removal of excess U.S. equipment and supplies and died after a rocket landed on its location from outside the base.

AP news agency is quoting Kenneth MacNevin, a spokesman for DLA, as saying that Davis was the first civilian of the agency killed in Afghanistan.

There is no world of responsibility for Monday’s attack but Taliban militants have claimed responsibility for several rocket attacks at the base in past.

“Islamic State” fighters have reportedly attacked a Taliban convoy in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 10 militants. Is it the beginning of a long and violent battle for Afghanistan’s control?

“Local residents and security officials confirmed that “Islamic State” (IS) fighters killed between 10 and 15 Taliban members in Nangarhar province,” Abdul Hai Akhondzada, deputy head of Afghan parliament’s national security commission, told DW on Tuesday. Similar skirmishes are taking place across Afghanistan where these Islamist groups are fighting to gain dominance, he added.

“The Taliban have been fighting for a long period of time in Afghanistan and they see their position threatened by the emergence of IS. Of course, they won’t give up easily,” the Afghan parliamentarian added.

According to the Afghan media, IS militants ambushed a Taliban convoy last week in Nangarhar and beheaded several captured men. The killings reportedly took place on Wednesday, June 3.

IS is an al Qaeda splinter group – a Sunni militant organization which has captured vast swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The organization, which is notorious for its extreme and violent interpretation of Shariah law and atrocities in the areas which it controls, is believed to have started expanding its influence and control in Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Since the beginning of this year, Afghan officials and police have repeatedly warned about an IS presence in several parts of the country.

In April, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a bank in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, killing at least 35 people. Contrary to initial suspicions, the attack was not carried out by the Taliban, who denied any responsibility. Instead, the bombing was attributed to IS by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

“IS has gained a presence in Afghanistan,” Farid Bakhtwar, head of the provincial council in Afghanistan’s western Farah province, told DW. He said that the militant group had started recruiting new members, including former Taliban fighters, in Afghanistan.

Growing rivalry

While some Taliban leaders have reportedly joined the IS ranks, the organization as a whole considers the Middle Eastern group “illegitimate” and has refused to forge an alliance with it. Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and IS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi both claim to be the caliphs of the Muslim world.

“While IS is fighting to increase its presence in the whole region – not only Afghanistan – the Taliban are fighting to overthrow the Afghan government,” said Akhondzada, adding that the two Islamist groups, despite being predominantly Sunni outfits, had different strategic goals.

Their open fighting, however, could have dire consequences for the war-torn country, as well as for regional security.

Siegfried O. Wolf, a South Asia researcher at the University of Heidelberg, believes the IS-Taliban battle could be “extremely dangerous for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

“A realistic review of concrete aims and strategies of IS indicates that it will enter the region sooner rather than later. Taking into account the strategic importance of the Afghanistan-Pakistan geographical area for the global jihad, one must expect that IS is planning to gain a permanent foothold in South Asia,” Wolf told DW, adding that if not directly, with the help of some Taliban factions and other extremist groups in the region, IS could achieve its goals.

But Wolf said it would be naïve to think that the Taliban would give up the control of Afghanistan easily: “It is a myth that the Taliban is now a fractious movement that is facing an existential crisis due to IS’ increasing presence and its own infighting. History has proven the resilience of the Taliban.”

Chances of an IS-Taliban alliance

Experts are of the view that while there could be some cooperation between IS and the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, a proper alliance between the two extremist groups is “highly unlikely.”

“There are certainly ideological convergences between the two groups, but otherwise there are simply too many factors that constrain the possibility of a partnership, much less a close alliance,” Michael Kugelman, Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told DW.

Kugelman added that the close connections between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda could not be ignored while analyzing the IS-Taliban relations. “It seems unlikely that the Taliban would want to join forces with an organization that split from its ally, al Qaeda.”

Wahid Mazhda, an expert on the Taliban in Kabul, shares that view. He believes that while it is possible for some small Islamic groups in Afghanistan to join IS, the Middle Eastern militant group would face ideological difficulties in recruiting fighters from Afghanistan.

“IS and the Taliban are very different ideologically and culturally. In Pakistan, however, they could find some supporters, and they already have,” he told DW.”Central Asia is more attractive for IS because there are a number of dictatorial regimes, and some extremist groups there have already shown a willingness to join them to overthrow the regional governments,” he added.

Muzhda said that IS was trying to establish a base in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhshan province so that it could have access to Central Asian countries.

“And that is why the fight in Afghanistan has moved from south to north where the Taliban are trying to gain control over this area before IS does.”

In precise air strikes Tuesday morning, 12 militants were killed in Khyber Agency, close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, an Inter-Servies Public Relations (ISPR) statement revealed.

The deeply forested areas near the border are a key smuggling route between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and are dotted with Taliban bases, used as launch pads for attacks on Pakistani forces.

In air strikes conducted this morning, 12 terrorists were killed, while initial reports revealed that some militants hideouts were also destroyed.

Last month, air strikes killed at least 15 suspected militants in Shawal Valley a week after security forces moved in on Taliban strongholds there.

Similar air strikes and operations have continued in the area in efforts to eliminate terrorism from the country.