Militants in northwest Pakistan attack a security post killing 10 forces

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a security post in northwest Pakistan killing 10 officers in an intense shootout, police said Friday.

Three other forces 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 fled with their dead and wounded when authorities dispatched reinforcements to the security post in the town of Draban.

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

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

In another attack, militants Friday evening opened fire at a mosque in the northwestern city of Lakki Marwat and killed an under-training soldier who was on leave and praying along with other worshippers, the military said. It identified the dead soldier as Arif Ullah, 19, who responded to the attack by returning fire.

In a statement, the military said Ullah sacrificed his life while trying to save other worshippers.

No one claimed responsibility for either attack but suspicion was 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.

Government 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 other 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.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen on the outskirts of Islamabad opened fire Friday on three prison vans and briefly freed some supporters of the country's imprisoned former premier Imran Khan. They were being transported to the Attock jail after their appearance in city court.

Dozens of other inmates on trial were also in the vans when the gunmen ambushed them.

Islamabad police chief Nasir Abbas told Pakistani media outlets that police quickly responded to the attack and arrested all the suspects who were trying to escape. It was unclear who the attackers were and why they tried to free Khan's supporters who were arrested this month when they defied a ban on rallies to demand his release.

Later, some of the attackers were also arrested, including the son of a lawmaker from Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI party, according to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar. He said that four policemen were also wounded in the attack.

PTI denied that any of their party members were behind it.