New Delhi: A group of terrrorists rammed a explosive-laden vehicle into the main gate of a police station in northwest Pakistan’s Dera Ismail Khan early Tuesday, killing at least 24 officers. The blast injured 34 of which five are critical. Five attackers of which two were suicide bombers have also been killed. The blast also caused a part of the building to collapse, news agency AP quoted officials as saying. The attack was followed by a gun battle between security forces and some militants who opened fire at the police station.


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The attack took place in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. The province was once a bastion of the militant Pakistani Taliban group, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.


A splinter group of the TTP, called Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, or TJP, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying it targeted the officers who were at the police station. The statement also claimed that 20 officers were killed. However, this couldn’t be independently verified.


The police station in Daraban area had been hosting a large number of security forces from across the country, who were conducting intelligence-based operations against militants in the area with the help of local police, Khan said.


Pakistan’s caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the attack in a statement and expressed his condolences to those who were “martyred”. He couldn’t immediately confirm the number of officers killed in the attack, which he called an act of “terrorism”.


Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has witnessed a surge in violence with several deadly attacks this year. In January, at least 101 people were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a mosque in Peshawar.


The Pakistani Taliban have intensified their attacks on security forces since 2022. Authorities say the militants have been emboldened by living openly in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of that country in 2021.


The TTP, though a separate group, is closely allied with the Afghan Taliban. Dera Ismail Khan is located near South Waziristan, a former stronghold of militants. Pakistan’s army carried out multiple operations against militants there after some attacked an army-run school, killing more than 150 people, mostly school children, in 2014.