Officials said that a group of around 100 armed men cordoned off the main bazaar in Ornach to take control of police and Levies stations. They made police officials hostage and snatched their weapons.
“Armed men snatched all weapons and other equipment from the police and after ransacking the record, they set the police station on fire,” Yasir Iqbal Dashti, Khuzdar deputy commissioner, said. He said the assailants also tried to take over the Levies station. Their attempts to snatch weapons from the levies officials failed after the latter offered resistance.
In another attack, assailants burn down dam machinery
However, the armed men set a levies patrol vehicle on fire before taking away a police vehicle and 13 automatic guns and ammunition. Sources said that armed men remained in the area for an hour and later disappeared in the mountains.
In another attack, a group of armed men attacked a dam site in Zehri. Official sources said that the attackers burnt all machinery at the Sohndah dam. They also held the watchmen hostage before setting the machinery of the dam on fire.
“All equipment and machinery were completely burnt in the fire. The armed men, after achieving their target, fled the area,” said officials. A heavy contingent of security forces later reached the area and launched a search operation to trace the elements involved in the attacks on levies and police.
According to officials, a child was killed in a grenade attack at a house in Sui area of Dera Bugti on Friday. They said the grenade exploded inside the house, injuring two persons and damaging a portion of the house. The injured were admitted to the Sui Hospital.
The attack occurred in Kurram district, located on the border with Afghanistan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where there has been a rise in violence in recent years.
“Heavily armed militants” launched the attack on Sunday morning, a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“At least four security personnel were martyred, and seven others were injured,” he said.
Violence has increased in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021.
The Pakistani Taliban — known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — is the most active militant group in the northwestern region and regularly targets security forces.
Islamabad accuses Kabul’s rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil as they prepare to stage assaults on Pakistan, a charge the Taliban government denies.
Last week, 13 civilians and five soldiers were killed when suicide bombers drove two car bombs into an army compound in the Bannu district of the same province.
Last year was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistan, home to 250 million people, with a surge in attacks that killed more than 1,600 people, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.
