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LAHORE: The death toll in a rocket launcher attack on policemen whose vehicle broke down in central Pakistan 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 spokesman Saif Ali Wains told AFP.

Two police vehicles carrying around 22 policemen were travelling through Rahim Yar Khan district in Punjab province on Thursday evening, when one of the vans broke down in low-level flooding.

Wains said the gang then used rocket launchers to target the stranded officers.

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

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

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.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered immediate and effective action against the attackers, his office said in a statement on Thursday.