A day after a suicide attack killed at least 100 and injured more than 200 people in a Peshawar mosque, a police station in Pakistan's Punjab province came under fire from heavily armed militants associated with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Tuesday night, the provincial police said in a statement on Twitter.
"Punjab Police foiled a terrorist attack on Makarwal police station in Mianwali. The attacking terrorists were repulsed by the retaliatory fire of the policemen and were forced to flee," the police tweeted.
Media outlets from Pakistan cited Punjab Inspector General of Police Dr. Usman Anwar as saying that the TTP has taken responsibility for the attack on the police station.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as Pakistani Taliban, is an Islamist alliance of several regional terrorist groups. The group opposes the government of Pakistan and is trying to extend its influence all over the country, including in Punjab and Sindh provinces, which are together home to most of the country's population.
Anwar further stated that police teams from Mianwali, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Sargodha in addition to Lahore police and the Punjab Counter Terrorism Department had launched a massive operation against the TTP to flush out militants hiding in and around the police station complex.
According to reports circulating on social media, the cops inside the police were first attacked by militants at around 9 pm the previous night. When the militants sprayed the station with automatic rifles, the cops retaliated with heavy gunfire and the exchange lasted two hours.
Despite the sudden attack on the police station, the Punjab IG confirmed that no personnel from the Punjab police were injured or killed in the fire as alert cops repulsed the attack.
However, the attack on the Makarwal police station is significant, given that the militants targeted a police station in Punjab Province for the first time since the ceasefire with the TTP came to an end late last year.
Previously, the militants had attacked police stations and check posts situated in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the areas surrounding the Afghanistan border.
*A terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.