Five police officers were martyred\u00a0on Tuesday when gunmen opened fire on a police vehicle in Pakistan\u2019s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said.<\/p>\n
The attackers set the vehicle ablaze after shooting at it in Karak district, police said. The officers were on duty when the ambush took place.<\/p>\n
Police identified the slain officers as Shahid Iqbal, Safdar, Arif, Samiullah and Muhammad Abrar.<\/p>\n
The attack occurred near Aman Kot in the Garagri Banda area. The mountainous region lies along the boundary between Karak, Kohat and Lakki Marwat districts and is considered highly sensitive because of oil and gas reserves.<\/p>\n
After the attack, police sealed off the area and launched a search operation. Investigators collected evidence from the scene and opened a formal inquiry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are investigating the incident from all angles and efforts are underway to trace the attackers,\u201d said Saud, the district police officer in Karak.<\/p>\n
Oil and gas from Garagri Banda are supplied to several southern districts of the province, including Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat, as well as Bhakkar. MOL Pakistan operates extraction in the area, with security provided by the Pakistan Army and other law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0DI Khan records 111 terror attacks in five years, 71 police officers martyred<\/p>\n
The region has a history of militant violence. In the past, armed groups have attacked oil and gas installations, and workers at some sites have been kidnapped.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack and expressed grief over the deaths.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police have always played a frontline role in the fight against terrorism,\u201d Sharif said. \u201cThe entire nation salutes the martyrs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi also condemned the ambush.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sacrifices of the police personnel will not go in vain. The provincial government stands with the police,\u201d Afridi said.<\/p>\n
The killings are the latest in a string of attacks targeting police in the province.<\/p>\n
Last week, a police officer and his brother were shot dead in Lakki Marwat. Earlier this month, one officer was killed and five others wounded in a suicide bombing that hit a police vehicle in the same district.<\/p>\n
In November, three police officers were killed while responding to a militant attack on a checkpoint in Hangu district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five police officers were martyred\u00a0on Tuesday when gunmen opened fire on a police vehicle in Pakistan\u2019s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said. The attackers set the vehicle ablaze after shooting at it in Karak district, police said. The officers were on duty when the ambush took place. Police identified the slain officers as Shahid Iqbal, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}