Eight Killed In Taliban Attack On Pakistan Police Station

At least, eight people were killed and eight others injured when Taliban militants attacked a police station in northwestern Pakistan, Monday, authorities said.

Media reports present different versions of the attack that occurred in the city of Bannu, near the Taliban and al-Qaeda bastion of North Waziristan.

According to local media reports and an AFP report, the incident was a suicide bomb attack in which two of the militants blew themselves up outside the Kaki police station, about 13 kilometers away from Bannu, while a third militant who also took part in the attack managed to escape.

"Three militants attacked the Kaki police station. They killed three policemen and two civilians," the information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, told AFP.

According to an Associated Press report, three police men were killed when four militants attacked a police station armed with rocket, hand grenades and automatic weapons. Three civilians who were coming out of a nearby mosque were also shot dead by militants and a total of eight people – three policemen and five civilians were injured in the battle that lasted over an hour.

A Reuters report citing security officials put the death toll at eight and said four militants participated in the attack and all of them were killed.

"Three suicide bombers blew themselves up, while one was shot by police before he could blow himself up," an intelligence source said.

Pakistan Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to the Associated Press from an undisclosed location.

North Waziristan is considered to be a nerve center of militant activity in Pakistan and has witnessed several such attacks in the past year. The U.S forces have employed drones to contain militant activities in the region, which borders Afghanistan.

Monday’s militant attack follows a successful drone attack by the U.S. forces Saturday in the Waziristan region that killed a top al-Qaeda commander and ten others.