PESHAWAR, Pakistan >> Pakistani security forces in 2024 suffered the highest casualties in nearly a decade while battling insurgency, an Islamabad-based research group said.

The Center for Research and Security Studies said in its report Tuesday that this year was the deadliest for Pakistani security forces in 9 years.

“On average, nearly seven lives were lost daily,” according to the report which tallied “at least 685 fatalities and 444 terror attacks.”

The data was released as militants mounted separate attacks on Tuesday on a security post, a government office and a police van in the country’s restive northwest, which borders Afghanistan, killing a policeman, and two civilians, including a child.

An officer was also wounded in the first attack at the Draban Post in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Abdullah Khan said, adding that the civilian was an employee of the Customs department.

A child was killed in the second attack when a roadside bomb went off outside a government office in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a police official Hayat Khan said. Also Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in the northwestern Bannu district, wounding seven people, police said.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who often target security forces across the country, especially in the former tribal regions in the troubled northwest bordering Afghanistan

.The Center for Research and Security Studies said its latest report was based on data collected from open sources, mainly media outlets.