Unidentified gunmen shot dead five Customs officials patrolling overnight in Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Three gunmen fired at the Customs team indiscriminately. Four officials died on the spot and another succumbed to his injuries in hospital later,” Sohaib Ashraf, district police chief in Kohat, told reporters.
“We are unaware of the identity of the attackers but it’s an act of terrorism,” he said.
Another police official in the area, Iqbal Mohmand said the attackers escaped on foot under cover of darkness.
“It was a terrorist attack on our team. All five members of the team were killed in this attack. They hailed from local areas of Kohat and Karak districts,” said a Customs official.
Uniformed government officials, including polio vaccination workers, are often targeted by militants in the area.
Customs officials, meanwhile, sometimes come under attack by criminal gangs.
Pakistan has strengthened its anti-terror strategy in the wake of a December 16 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that killed 153 people, 134 of them children.
