Militants attack a Pakistani police post and kill 5 officers in a northwestern province

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Militants attacked a police post in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, triggering a gunbattle that killed five police officers and wounded about two dozen others, officials said.

Police killed four of the attackers in the battle, which was still underway in Hangu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, according to local police official Irfan Khan. Some of the wounded officers were in critical condition at a local hospital, he said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has stepped up attacks on Pakistani security forces in the region in recent months.

Hours earlier, Pakistan’s military said security forces had killed 32 militants in intelligence-based operations carried out over the previous 24 hours in northwestern and southwestern Pakistan.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP, a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation that Kabul denies.