Ten policemen, including a station house officer (SHO), were killed and several others injured when suspected Taliban launched a gun and suicide attack on a police station in Kolachi tehsil of Dera Ismail Khan on Saturday.
Kolachi is a small town in DI Khan that lies close to South Waziristan Agency and Lakki Marwat. Per details, the terrorists entered the police station while hurling hand grenades and opening indiscriminate fire at the building, taking around 20 policemen hostage.“Eight to ten militants attacked the police station,” Main Iftikhar Hussain, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa minister for information told reporters.
However, police sources said there were five attackers, all of whom had been killed in the clearance operation that continued for about one-and-a-half hour. DI Khan district police officer (DPO) and deputy inspector general (DIG) supervised the operation. Sources said two terrorists blew themselves up when a police armoured personnel carrier entered the police station premises, while a third terrorists wearing a suicide vest was targeted with a rocket launcher by officials taking part in the operation.
The police station building was completely destroyed in three explosions. Mohammad Raees, a witness, said three of the attackers were riding a motorbike. “One of them was wearing a burqa and threw the burqa away as they attacked the police station.” South Waziristan is a major al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary along the Afghan border.
Militants have stepped up attacks, many of them on Pakistani security forces, in what they say is retaliation for the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy SEALS in a raid in the garrison town of Abbottabad last month. They attacked a heavily guarded navy base in Karachi in May, killed nearly 100 people in twin suicide bombings on a paramilitary compound in the northwest and carried out a car bomb attack.|
