An overnight militant attack on a police post in Hangu district, northwestern Pakistan, left 11 police officers and 15 attackers dead early Thursday, police and a government official said. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
Security forces killed 15 militants in an hourlong gunbattle after they targeted the Khazina police post in Hangu district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, police official Irfan Khan said. The militants attacked the police post with heavy weapons. Reinforcements dispatched to the scene were ambushed en route, damaging an armored personnel carrier before officers fought back, according to a provincial police statement.
Among those killed was Diyar Khan, a senior police officer who led reinforcements to the scene. More than two dozen police officers were also wounded in the attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault. Suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces in the region in recent months. The TTP is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan's Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation Kabul denies.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP.