Nearly 20 police personnel and civilians have been killed in a wave of militant attacks across northwest Pakistan over the past two days, a police official said on Thursday, in the latest surge of violence to hit the restive border region.

The attacks come days after Afghan and Pakistani forces traded fire along their porous frontier, each side blaming the other for the flare-up in hostilities.

“Over the past 48 hours, 15 police personnel and four civilians have been killed in terrorist incidents across various parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” a senior police official told AFP.

According to the police official based in the provincial capital Peshawar, two police officers were also kidnapped and “are still missing”.

Most of the attacks have been claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant group that has stepped up assaults in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.

Twenty-six militants were also killed in four separate counter operations in the region, the military said.

Islamabad accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of failing to rein in militant groups that it says use Afghan soil to plan and launch attacks in Pakistan, a charge Kabul denies.

Violence has surged in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and neighbouring Balochistan in recent months, with security forces frequently targeted in roadside bombings, ambushes and raids, straining already tense relations between the two countries.

Pakistan’s military has launched repeated strikes against what it says are militant hideouts across the border following a string of deadly suicide bombings, fuelling diplomatic tensions with Kabul.