Pakistan: 3 security personnel killed in attack

Three Pakistani security personnel were killed in an overnight attack by militants in the country's northwest, police said on Friday.

Nine security personnel were injured when over 100 militants attacked the police post at Sarband, an area on the boundary between the restive Khyber tribal region and Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The heavily armed militants launched the attack late Thursday night. The post is jointly manned by the paramilitary Frontier Corps and police. The injured men were taken to a hospital in Peshawar, where two paramilitary troopers and a policeman died early Friday morning, officials said.

Three militants were killed in the exchange of fire, TV news channels quoted officials as saying. Police said the militants used rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the attack.

Senior Superintendent of Police (Operations) Tahir Ayub told the media last night that the police and Frontier Corps were pushed back from the post and additional forces were called in to fight the militants.

Ayub said the attack was an apparent reaction to an operation launched yesterday by security forces in areas bordering Khyber Agency.

He said troops had destroyed three important militant hideouts during the action.

Local residents said security forces had vacated houses near the post in Sarband as they exchanged fire with the militants for a few hours. The militants fled by taking advantage of the darkness.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Islam are active in the Khyber Agency. The Taliban had recently warned they would carry out attacks to avenge the killing of commander Qari Kamran and 11 other militants by security forces in the Tirah valley area of Khyber Agency last month.

The Taliban recently killed 15 paramilitary troopers they had kidnapped in retaliation for the killing of Qari Kamran.