PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Militants armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked a security post in northwest Pakistan and killed 10 officers in an intense firefight, police said Friday.

Other security forces were injured in the overnight attack in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Abdul Rauf said.

He said the attackers suffered casualties but fled with their dead and wounded accomplices when authorities sent reinforcements to the security post in Draban town.

Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in a statement paid tribute to the security forces who were killed and offered condolences to the families of the victims.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who often target security forces across the country, particularly in the former tribal regions of the restive northwest.

Security forces have recently carried out intelligence-based operations against the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and have been encouraged since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

The TTP is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.

The attack on the security post took place within 24 hours of two separate operations in which security forces shot and killed 19 insurgents in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Mianwali, a town in eastern Punjab province.