Pakistani security forces retook a counter-terrorism interrogation centre in Bannu, a city in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, on Tuesday two days after it was seized by militants, security sources said.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told parliament that all the hostages, some slightly wounded, had been rescued by the Pakistani army, who also lost two elite services commandos in the operation.
Khawaja Asif informed that all militants, who had taken over the centre two days after they had held security officers and detainees hostages at the northwestern facility, were killed.
Security forces had earlier launched the operation to free the hostages from the Pakistani Taliban who snatched interrogators' weapons and took them captive on Sunday, according to Reuters.
Six security officials and several detainees had been inside the centre, multiple sources told Reuters. They declined to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Several army soldiers were also wounded in the operation, Asif said.
Security forces had surrounded the military district in which the centre is located, where about 20 fighters from the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), were holed up.
Pakistani authorities on Monday opened talks to try to resolve the stand-off.
The TTP are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban.
The group emerged to fight the Pakistan state and enforce its own harsh brand of Islam in the years after the United States and its allies intervened in neighbouring Afghanistan to oust the Afghan Taliban in 2001 and drive them over the border into Pakistan.