Militants armed with assault rifles attacked a security post in restive northwest Pakistan early on Tuesday, killing a police officer and a civilian.
According to officials, another officer was also wounded in the attack at the Draban Post in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Abdullah Khan said, adding that the civilian was an employee of the Customs department.
He also said security forces returned fire and that “a group of insurgents” fled the scene.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani
Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, who often target security forces across the country, especially in the former tribal regions in the troubled northwest bordering Afghanistan.
Security forces have also stepped up intelligence-based operations against the Pakistani Taliban, emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
The Center for Research and Security Studies said its latest report was based on data collected from open sources, mainly media outlets. In Pakistan, the military doesn’t regularly confirm causalities among troops.
“Equally alarming were the cumulative losses of civilians and security personnel – 1612 fatalities, accounting for over 63% of the total recorded this year and marking 73% more losses compared to 934 outlaws eliminated,” it said.
There has been no immediate comment from the military on either report.
