THE Pakistani Taliban has denied involvement in a bomb attack, which killed a police officer and wounded four others.

Foreign ambassadors and senior envoys were travelling by police convoy to the Swat Valley, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, when the attack occurred in the ski resort of Malam Jabba.

Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, denied detonating the improvised explosive device that hit a police vehicle accompanying the convoy.

Those travelling in the convoy were ambassadors and officials from Indonesia, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia and Tajikistan. 

All were unharmed and later returned to the capital, Islamabad, according to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Analysts suggest a security breach allowed the attack to take place.

Abdullah Khan, a defence analyst and managing director of the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies said: “For sure it was a security breach because the convoy’s route was only known to police, and the bomb disposal unit had reportedly cleared the route.

“Some insider [appears to have] leaked the information about the travel plans of the foreign ambassadors to the militants.”

In a statement, TTP said it had nothing to do with the attack. TTP is a separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.

Sunday’s attack came months after a suicide bomber in north-western Pakistan rammed his explosive-laden car into a vehicle, killing five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver in Shangla, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.