• Constable injured in attack on police station. 
• Militants flee area after exchange of fire. 
• Search operation started in area to catch suspects.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Suspected militants attacked a police station in Dera Ismail Khan last night which was repelled by security personnel, reported The News on Monday citing officials. 

This was one of the multiple attacks in the district since Friday which injured a police constable. The militants targeted the Gul Imam police station in Tank.

According to details, the armed militants attacked the police station which resulted in a fire exchange between the police personnel and the attackers. The militants then fled the area.

Police Constable Waheed Gul was injured in the exchange of fire which continued for an hour. He was rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital in Tank. 

District Police Officer Tank Iftikhar Ali Shah immediately reached the spot along with a large contingent of police. A search operation was started in the area to hunt down the suspects. 

On Sunday evening, another policeman was injured in a terrorist attack on a checkpost in the Roori area of the Kulachi tehsil.

The police said that the attackers used small and heavy weapons during an exchange of fire after which they managed to escape.

Heavy contingents of police from Kulachi and Daraban also rushed to the area. 

On Friday, at least six people were killed and more than 30 were injured including two policemen in a blast targeting a police van in DI Khan’s Tank Adda area.  

The vehicle was on its way from Ijaz Shaheed Police Lines in Dera Ismail Khan city to Kulachi tehsil when it was attacked with a remote-controlled blast.

A senior police official said that explosives had been planted in a motorcycle. The victims were stated to be civilians who were passing through the area when the attack took place.

Experts from the Bomb Disposal Unit said that five to six kilograms of explosives were used in the blast, which badly damaged the police van.

In another blast near police and army convoy martyred a security office in the Takwara area of Kulachi on Friday. 

Pakistan has been facing the daunting challenge of terrorism for the last year as several incidents of terror and violence have taken place lately. 

Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), in a report released in October, noted that the security forces lost at least 386 personnel in the first nine months of 2023, marking an eight-year high.

In the third quarter of 2023, some 445 people lost their lives and 440 suffered injuries from as many as 190 terror attacks and counter-terror operations.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan were the primary centres of violence, accounting for nearly 94% of all fatalities and 89% of attacks (including incidents of terrorism and security forces operations) recorded during this period.