Explosive-Laden Pickup Rams DI Khan Police Station GatePakistan

Police personnel on duty returned fire at once and engaged the attackers in an intense exchange, forcing them to abandon their assault and flee before they could enter the station. SP Paharpur confirmed that the attack was foiled through the timely and effective response of the officers on duty.

No casualties or injuries were reported in the incident, police said, and all personnel deployed at the station remained safe. The attackers retreated under retaliatory fire, and officers held their positions through the night.

The attack came on a day of heightened militant activity across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In a separate incident, police said ten police personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, were killed in an ambush in Kohat district while returning from an operation, while a wanted militant commander was killed in an operation in Khyber district.

In the Kohat ambush, police said the attackers, described as members of Fitna al-Khawarij — the term the state uses for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan — targeted a police party returning from an operation against illegal gold mining in the Darbokach area, between Kohat and Karak. Eighteen attackers were also killed in that incident, according to police. In the Khyber operation, police said a senior commander, Saifullah, was killed in the Bara Shaikhan area.

Dera Ismail Khan has seen repeated attacks on police and security forces in recent months. In September, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a check post in the district’s Darazanda area, killing 12 people, including two women and a two-year-old child, according to reports.

The assault on Band Korai Police Station underlines the pressure on police in the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where officers on the front line of the fight against militancy have faced repeated attacks on their stations, check posts and patrols.