LAHORE: The main culprit behind the rocket attack from dacoits in Rahim Yar Khan District’s Machka area that martyred 12 cops has been killed, the police said on Friday.

A police statement on Friday said that the main culprit behind the attack was killed in an overnight operation.

“The operation will continue until the perpetrators are eliminated,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 12 on Friday, police said.

Organised criminal gangs have been active in the riverine border areas of southern Sindh and central Punjab provinces for decades, often making money through kidnap-for-ransom assaults.

“At least twelve policemen were martyred, and eight others injured in the attack,” police spokesperson Saif Ali Wains told AFP.

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The military launched a full-scale operation against criminal gangs in Sindh in the early 1990s but they resurfaced after successive governments failed to maintain law and order in the province.

On Thursday, at least 11 police officers were martyred and seven injured when dacoits attacked two police vehicles with rockets in the riverine area of Rahim Yar Khan’s Machka.

According to a Punjab police statement, two police vans were returning from their weekly assignments in the riverine Machaka district of Rahim Yar Khan when one of them experienced a failure.

“The bandits attacked the vehicles with rocket launchers after one of the vehicles in the convoy broke down,” said a statement from the inspector general’s office in Punjab.

Meanwhile, on Friday, Punjab CM Maryam Nawaz directed the Punjab home secretary to initiate an immediate operation in the Katcha areas, according to a post on X by her PML-N party.

“She has directed that a swift and effective response be given to the dacoits, with the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) Punjab leading the operation,” the PML-N said.