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Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a pre-dawn militant raid had killed at least 10 police officers and injured six others ahead of national elections later this week.

The attack occurred in the militancy-hit Dera Ismail Khan, where officials reported that a group of heavily armed assailants stormed a police station, using sniper guns and grenades and spraying security forces with bullets before fleeing.

Area police said that a "large-scale search operation" was currently underway with the help of Pakistani troops to hunt down the attackers. All roads leading in and out of the district have been blocked.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the carnage, but suspicions fell on Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, an outlawed group that routinely stages attacks on security forces in the district located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.