Militants Attack a Security Post in Northwest Pakistan, Killing 10 Officers

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Militants armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a security post in northwest Pakistan and killed 10 officers in an intense shootout, police said Friday.

Three other security force members were wounded in the overnight attack in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Abdul Rauf said.

He said the assailants suffered casualties, and they fled along with their dead and injured accomplices when authorities dispatched reinforcements to the security post in the town of Draban.

Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in a statement paid tributes to the officers who were killed and offered his condolences to their families.

Also Friday, suspected militants ambushed a police vehicle carrying officers, killing a local police chief and another policeman, authorities said.

No one claimed responsibility for either attack but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who often target security forces across the country, especially in the former tribal regions in the troubled northwest.

In a statement, the Interior Ministry denounced the killing of security forces in the northwest.

Security forces recently have been conducting intelligence-based operations against the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and have been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

The TTP is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.

The attack on the security post came within 24 hours of two separate operations in which security forces shot and killed 19 insurgents in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Mianwali, a city in eastern Punjab province.