Six martyred in attack on Hungarian energy firm in Hangu

PESHAWAR (AFP) - Six security personnel were martyred in an overnight siege by dozens of militants on a Hungarian-owned oil and gas exploration site, police said on Tuesday.

About 50 fighters attacked a site owned by the Budapest-headquartered MOL Group around midnight in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, district police chief Asif Bahadur told AFP.

"They were armed with light and heavy weapons and fired mortar shells, killing six security personnel at the main entrance" to the remote site near the Afghan border, said Bahadur.

He said the dead included four members of the Frontier Constabulary and two Pakistani private security guards for the firm.

"The exchange of fire continued for more than an hour. Police forced the militants to flee," Bahadur added. He blamed the attack on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – the most active militant group in the region – although there has been no claim of responsibility.

Noor Wali Khan, a second district police official, confirmed the attack and the death toll. The MOL Group has operated a Pakistan subsidiary since 1999 and employs 400 people in the country, according to their website.

"We are assessing the information," a spokesman for the Hungarian embassy in Islamabad said, adding that no diplomatic action was planned. The MOL Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bahadur said the attackers came from the nearby North Waziristan district, which borders Afghanistan and has historically been a hive of militancy.