Islamabad, May 23, (dpa/GNA) – At least six security guards at an oil exploration site in Pakistan run by Hungarian company MOL were killed when dozens of armed men attacked the facility, officials said on Tuesday.
The attackers attempted to storm the site in the Hangu region of the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, local police official Asadullah Khan told dpa.
Paramilitary troops and private security guards fought an hours-long gun battle with the attackers, forcing them to flee, Khan added.
The dead include four troops from the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary force and two guards from a private security company.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in the region near the Afghan border, but Islamist militants from the Pakistani Taliban and Islamic State militias have targeted energy companies in the past.
The attack comes weeks after six Pakistani soldiers were killed in the same region in a shoot-out with the Pakistani Taliban, a group different from their Afghan counterparts.
Pakistan’s military has stepped up operations in the region after a Taliban suicide bomber killed at least 84 people, mostly police, at a mosque inside the police headquarters in the city of Peshawar in January.
Pakistani Taliban have killed around 80,000 people in decades of violence.
GNA