DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Terrorists martyred an army officer on Thursday during a gun battle in a tribal district close to the Afghan border, the army said, close to where three soldiers maryred in a suicide attack the previous day.

Major Abdullah Shah, 33, was leading an operation in the Khyber region when he was shot dead in an exchange of fire, the army said, adding that “three terrorists and their facilitators” were taken prisoner.

On Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle close to a military check-point in nearby North Waziristan district, martyring three soldiers and several civilians, the army said.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakis-tan (TTP), a local militant umbrella organisation of Sunni Islamists and sectarian groups, claimed responsibility for martyring Shah.