The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has announced the end of an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the government in June and issued orders to its fighters to carry out attacks across the country.
The TTP said it is facing a rising number of attacks by the Pakistani military, particularly in the Lakki Marwat district of Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
"We submit to the people of Pakistan that we have repeatedly warned you and continued to be patient so that the negotiation process is not sabotaged at least by us, but the army and intelligence agencies do not stop and continue the attacks, so now our retaliatory attacks will also start across the country," the TTP statement said.
Following Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's decision to call off their months-long ceasefire with Islamabad, Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar's Tuesday held talks in Kabul with the Afghan officials .
The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but are allies of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan more than a year ago as the U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan emboldened TTP, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban have for years used Afghanistan's rugged border regions for hideouts and for staging cross-border attacks into Pakistan.
The TTP has been waging a rebellion against the state of Pakistan for more than a decade. The group demands the imposition of hardline Islamic law, release of key members arrested by the government and a reversal of the merger of Pakistan's tribal areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The government in Islamabad, on the other hand, wants the Pakistani Taliban disbanded and for the fighters to accept Pakistan's constitution and sever alleged ties with ISIL (ISIS), another armed group with a regional affiliate that is active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On November 16, the TTP claimed responsibility for an attack on a police patrol in Lakki Marwat, about 200km (125 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Peshawar. Six policemen were killed.
Security specialist Asfandyar Mir of the United States Institute of Peace told Al Jazeera that while the TTP has been escalating its violence recently, it has also exercised restraint by not carrying out attacks outside tribal areas. "Now if the TTP follows through its declaration of countrywide attacks, the key question is how will the Afghan Taliban respond."
The government and the TTP have held multiple rounds of talks facilitated by the Afghan Taliban, the last of which took place in June. The talks began weeks after the Taliban took control of Kabul last year. Despite the ceasefire, the TTP continued its attacks this year, saying they were defensive in nature and only in retaliation for operations carried out by Pakistan's military.
According to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based research organization, at least 65 such attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through the end of October. They killed at least 98 people and wounded 75, it said.
The TTP announcement to end the ceasefire comes a day before Pakistan's outgoing army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa " who had approved the controversial cease-fire with TTP in May " is to retire after completing his six-year extended term.
Bajwa Tuesday handed over command of the military to the newly appointed army chief General Asim Munir at a ceremony in the garrison city of Rawalpindi amid tight security because of fears of violence.
General Bajwa, during his tenure, carried out a series of military operations against TTP before agreeing to the peace talks with the militants, who have waged an insurgency in Pakistan for 14 years.
