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.
