PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) ? At least 10 policemen were killed Saturday when Taliban militants in suicide vests, some of them clad in burqas, laid siege to a police station in northwest Pakistan, officials said.
"Police have taken the control of the police station and 10 of our policemen were martyred in the attack and six attackers were killed," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP.
Militants armed with guns and hand grenades had attacked Kolachi police station near the border with South Waziristan tribal district and taken a group of policemen hostage.
Hussain said the burqa-clad attackers had hoped to secure the release of other militants.
"The attackers had come prepared for days of siege and hostage-taking to secure the release of other militants," Hussain told AFP.
"When our armoured car entered the police station two suicide bombers blew themselves up and a third suicide bomber was killed by a rocket," Hussain said.
"Police have found the bodies of three militants and the heads of three suicide bombers," Hussain said, adding that half of the police station building had been destroyed and 11 policemen wounded.
Regional police chief Imtiaz Shah told AFP there was one woman among the suicide bombers.
Shah said the siege began when attackers dressed in burqas pulled out guns at the station's main gate and killed policemen deployed there.
The militants then damaged the boundary wall with hand grenades, enabling more rebels to follow them into the building.
About 17 policemen were on duty at the time and were taken hostage by the militants once they ran out of ammunition, the police chief said.
As security forces were called to the scene and cordoned off the police station, two of the attackers detonated their suicide vests, while three others were shot dead by security forces, Shah said.
District police chief Mohammad Hussain Khan said it was likely the attackers had come from the nearby lawless tribal belt.
Television footage showed thick black smoke billowing from the roof of the fortress-like police station and security forces and police firing at militants.
Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan in a telephone call to AFP claimed responsibility, saying it was the latest in a series of attacks to avenge the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
"We sent one male and one female suicide bomber to participate in the attack, because we want to liberate our people from the slavery of America," Ehsan said.
US Navy SEALs in a covert operation killed bin Laden in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2 in a raid which has strained ties between Pakistan and the United States.
Nearly 4,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
Washington has called the semi-autonomous region the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda, where Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked networks need to be defeated if the 10-year war in Afghanistan is ever to end.
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