Peshawar: At least five law enforcement officials were killed and as many as injured after militants attacked a regional police headquarters in a former Taliban stronghold in northwest Pakistan Friday, three days after terrorists killed 23 soldiers in the same region.
The attack occurred at the Police Lines in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Tank district.
A “terrorist blew himself up in a suicide bomb” and that the “huge attack was thwarted”, the Dawn newspaper quoted Tank District Police Officer Iftikhar Shah as saying.
He said that all contingents present in the Police Lines were evacuated safely and that a search operation was underway after alerts of the presence of more militants in the area.
The attack was claimed by a new militant group, Ansarul Jihad. The firing was continuing between the police and terrorists.
The attack comes days after at least 23 soldiers were killed and more than 30 others injured after militants belonging to the Tehreek-i-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), a newly formed militant group that is an affiliate of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), stormed a compound used by the military in Dera Ismail Khan.
The TJP terror outfit has been behind some major attacks in Pakistan.
November 4, the TJP militants attacked the Pakistan Air Force’s Mianwali Training Air Base, some 300 km from Lahore, damaging three grounded aircraft.
The terrorists have repeatedly attacked the security and military installations in Pakistan.
In September 2015, Taliban gunmen killed 29 people, including 16 worshippers in a mosque, when they stormed Badaber air base, close to the northwestern city of Peshawar.
In May 2011, 15 terrorists belonging to TTP and Al Qaeda attacked PNS Mehran, the headquarters of the Pakistan Navy’s Naval Air Arm, located in Sindh, and killed 18 military personnel and wounded 16. Two American-built surveillance aircraft were also destroyed.
PTI