At least 10 policemen were martyred and six others injured in a late-night attack on a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan district, police said on Monday.
Police said terrorists attacked the police station with heavy weapons at 3am in Tehsil Daraban of the district.
The injured have been shifted to DHQ Hospital, they added.
The terrorists attacked the police station from all sides with grenades and heavy gunfire.
The police also retaliated, but the terrorists escaped in the darkness of the night, the law enforcement agency added.
The forces have cordoned off the area and launched a search operation to hunt down the fleeing militants, while the quick response force has reached with additional force, according to the police.
Funeral prayers of martyred police personnel will be offered in the police line, they added.
Last month, three cops and two soldiers were martyred in two different terror incidents in Kohat, Miranshah and Lakki Marwat on Wednesday, while an independent candidate for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and his two other colleagues were killed by unidentified assailants during the election campaign in Waziristan.
Pakistani districts along the border with Afghanistan have seen a dramatic spike in attacks since the Taliban returned to power there in 2021.
Islamabad claims Kabul is sheltering allied militants such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) allowing them to strike on its soil with impunity.
According to the statistics issued by the Department of Interior and Tribal Affairs KP, the areas most affected by terrorism include Peshawar, Khyber, Bajaur, and Tank while Dera Ismail Khan and North Waziristan and South Waziristan are included in the terror-affected areas.
The documents of the Home and Tribal areas revealed that a total of 1,050 incidents of terrorism took place in KP last year while 419 incidents of terrorism took place in the arranged districts, and 631 incidents in the merged districts.
