Militants storm Pakistani post, kill 3 security men

Three Pakistani security personnel, who had been injured in an overnight militants attack in the country’s northwest, died Friday, police said. Police said that nine security men were injured when over a hundred militants attacked the Police Post in Sarband, an area on the boundary of the restive Khyber tribal region and Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Police said that nine paramilitary soldiers and police had been injured when heavily armed militants launched the late night attack. The check post is jointly manned by the paramilitary Frontier Corps and the police. Local media quoted police as saying that three militants were also killed in fire by the security personnel. Police sources said that the militants used rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the attack. The injured had been shifted to the Hayatabad Medical Complex and two paramilitary soldiers and a police man died on Friday of wounds, police sources said. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations Tahir Ayub told the media late night that the police and Frontier Corps (FC) were pushed back and that more force had been called to fight the militants. He said that the attack was an apparent reaction to an operation by security forces which had been launched in bordering areas of Khyber Agency on Thursday. The police officer claimed that the security forces had destroyed three of their important hideouts. He said nearly 150 militants launched the attack on the police check post. Sources said that the militants took up positions on two sides of the checkpost before firing their rockets. Locals said that the security forces had vacated nearby houses as the two sides had been involved in exchange of fire for few hours. The militants later fled taking advantage of darkness, sources said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Tehrike-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP and another militant group ‘Lashkar-e-Islam’ are active in Khyber Agency, also a main NATO supply route to Afghanistan. TTP had warned revenge attacks of its top commander Qari Kamran who was killed with 11 other militants by the security forces in the mountainous Tirah valley on December 31. The TTP had killed 15 kidnapped security men to take revenge of the killing of Commander Kamran this month. The security men had been killed in early attack on a fort of security men near South Waziristan tribal region.