Ten Pakistani law enforcement personnel perished and six sustained injuries in a nocturnal assault on a police precinct situated in the Chodwan district within the urban confines of Dera Ismail Khan on the onset of Monday, as affirmed by an authoritative source cited by the Dawn publication. This incursion precedes the pivotal February 8th nationwide electoral proceedings. The occurrence has been corroborated to the Pakistan Daily by the Regional Police Officer (RPO) Nasir Mehmood.

 

Pakistan has been grappling with security apprehensions in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan territories, which have witnessed a spate of assaults over recent days.

 

The preceding week, the Election Commission of Pakistan and security agencies undertook an assessment of the ground situation and assured that the polls would transpire as scheduled.

 

A seasoned commander divulged to the news agency AFP that a multitude of militants assailed the Chaudhwan police station during the early hours of Monday, resulting in the demise of no less than 10 officers mere days before the national election, which has already encountered numerous attacks on candidates and party adherents. “More than 30 insurgents launched an offensive from three different axes. An exchange of gunfire ensued for a span exceeding two and a half hours,” relayed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat Gandapur to the aforementioned news agency. During the wee hours at approximately 3 am (local time), a faction of militants launched an offensive on the law enforcement precinct in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, as per reports from Reuters. Per accounts from local law enforcement authorities, the assailants initiated their attack with precision rifle fire before penetrating the premises.

 

“Following their ingress into the edifice, the assailants resorted to employing hand grenades, inflicting further casualties upon the police force,” disclosed Malik Anees ul Hassan, the deputy superintendent of police in Draban, to the news agency.

 

The motives underpinning the assault remain nebulous at present, with authorities yet to discern whether it bears any connection to the ongoing electoral processes.

 

This incident compounds a succession of violent incidents in the vicinity. Earlier in the week, a contender for the national assembly succumbed to gunshot wounds in an independent occurrence in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, while concurrently, a political luminary perished in an attack on his party’s electoral headquarters in the Balochistan province.