Hangu: An assault on a security checkpoint in northern Pakistan late on Wednesday left at least seven police officers and eight suspected militants dead, according to local media, coming only days after a separate confrontation in the same region killed more than two dozen people.
Geo News, citing District Police Officer Tariq Habib, reported that the attack took place in Hangu district in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, as reported by France 24.
Habib said 22 more police personnel were wounded in the incident, and a clearance operation was underway in the area. No organization had claimed responsibility for the attack at the time of reporting.
The latest violence follows another attack on a checkpoint in Tank district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that borders Afghanistan and has seen intensifying attacks attributed to the Islamist Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan group.
In that earlier assault, militants rammed an explosives-packed vehicle into a security post, killing 15 people, including soldiers, police officers and government personnel.
The military said security forces killed 12 militants in the response. Pakistan has repeatedly blamed the surge in attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in the southern border province of Balochistan on militancy emerging from Afghanistan, a charge the Taliban government in Kabul rejects.
Those accusations have deepened tensions between the two neighbours, fueling cross-border clashes and Pakistani airstrikes that Islamabad says are aimed at militant targets on Afghan territory.
The Taliban government and the United Nations said Pakistani strikes in eastern Afghanistan in June killed dozens of civilians.
