Eleven police officers were killed and more than 20 wounded when heavily armed militants stormed a security post in northwestern Pakistan overnight, with the death toll climbing to 11 by Thursday morning, July 30, 2026, according to police and a government official. An hourlong gunbattle left 15 attackers dead before the assault was repelled.

The militants targeted the Khazina police post in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a region that borders Afghanistan and has become a persistent flashpoint for insurgent violence, according to police official Irfan Khan. The scale of the assault — the number of dead on both sides and the severity of the fighting — underscored the intensity of a campaign that has strained Pakistani security forces across the province in recent months.

A Coordinated Overnight Assault

Police said the attackers opened fire on the post with heavy weapons, launching a sustained barrage that quickly drew reinforcements. But the officers dispatched to relieve their colleagues were ambushed en route, according to a provincial police statement. The militants damaged an armored personnel carrier before the officers regrouped and fought back.

Among the dead was Diyar Khan, a senior police officer who led the reinforcements toward the besieged post, the statement said. His death — and the toll among the officers who followed him into the ambush — points to a tactic militants have used repeatedly in the region: draw responders into a second kill zone after an initial strike.

More than 20 police officers were wounded in the fighting. Video and images from the aftermath showed casualties being carried into a hospital in Peshawar, the provincial capital, as medical staff worked to treat the injured.

No Claim of Responsibility

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault. But authorities are expected to investigate whether the Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), carried out the attack, given the group’s intensified campaign against Pakistani security forces in the region in recent months.

The TTP is a separate organization from the Afghan Taliban but a close ally of it. The group has been blamed for much of the militant violence that has surged across Pakistan in recent years, and it has shown a growing willingness to strike hardened targets such as police posts and military checkpoints.

The pattern is not new. In May 2026, a suicide bombing at a security post in the Bannu district of the same province killed 14 people, an assault later claimed by a splinter faction. Bannu, like Hangu, sits in the belt of districts along the Afghan frontier where insurgent groups have long operated.

A Region Under Strain

Inspector General of Police Zulfiqar Hameed traveled to Hangu to meet the injured, according to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police, a visit that reflected the seriousness with which authorities are treating the assault and the mounting pressure on the province’s force.

The violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has taken many forms. In November 2024, gunmen ambushed convoys of passenger vehicles in the Kurram tribal district, killing at least 38 people, including a woman and a child, in an attack rooted in a long-running sectarian land dispute. Earlier, a suicide bombing inside a mosque in Peshawar killed 84 people, one of the deadliest attacks the city has endured.

Those incidents, spread over years and driven by different actors, illustrate the layered nature of the threat security forces face in the province — from sectarian militants to insurgent networks operating along the border.

Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which returned to power in 2021, of providing sanctuary to TTP fighters — an allegation Kabul denies. The dispute has become a central irritant in relations between the two neighbors, with Pakistani officials arguing that militants stage cross-border attacks from bases inside Afghanistan and then retreat to safety.

The assault on the Khazina post adds to a grim tally for Pakistan’s security forces, who have borne the brunt of the rising insurgency. Officials had not released further details about the identities of the attackers or a possible motive by early Thursday, and no arrests were immediately announced.

For now, the focus in Hangu remains on the wounded and on securing a district that has once again found itself on the front line of a conflict showing few signs of easing.