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At least 10 Police Personnel Killed in Militant Attack at Pakistani Police Station: Media

13:54, 5 February 2024

Swapna Nair

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Over 30 militants launched the attack from three directions, exchanging fire for over two and a half hours, according to local police.

Sputnik

Militants targeted a police station in northwestern Pakistan in a pre-dawn attack on Monday, killing at least 10 policemen and wounding six others, Pakistani media reported, citing police sources.

The incident comes amid heightened violence in the run-up to this week's general election.

The attackers, armed with sniper rifles, began the assault at around 3am local time (2200 GMT Sunday) and entered the police station, authorities in Pakistan's Draban region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province said.

“More than 30 terrorists launched an attack from three directions. There was an exchange of fire for over two and a half hours”, according to police.

Malik Anees ul Hassan, the Deputy Superintendent of police in Draban, stated that "after entering the building, the terrorists used hand grenades which caused more casualties to the police”.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, a National Assembly candidate was shot dead in another part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. At the same time, a political figure was shot dead at his party's election office in Balochistan province on the same day.

Elsewhere, a bomb blast after an election rally in Balochistan on Tuesday killed four people and was claimed by the Islamic State (IS).

The Draban region is recognised as a stronghold of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, and its leader, Maulana Fazal Ur Rehman, reportedly travelled to Afghanistan last month to meet the Taliban's supreme spiritual leader, in one of his few known meetings with foreign dignitaries, according to local media reports.

Since the breakdown of a ceasefire between the Pakistani Taliban and the government in 2022, Pakistan has witnessed a renewed wave of attacks carried out by Islamist militants, with a particular focus on targeting security personnel.

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