According to security officials, the attackers were killed following a three-hour operation that was launched after the militants entered the police academy, located in Pakistan’s city of Quetta in the province of Balochistan.

A Pakistani soldier stands guard outside the Police Training Center after an attack on the center in Quetta, Pakistan October 25, 2016.

Officials noted that all three assailants were wearing explosive vests while they entered the facility.

"I saw three men in camouflage whose faces were hidden carrying Kalashnikovs," one cadet told reporters. "They started firing and entered the dormitory but I managed to escape over a wall," he added.

Hundreds of cadets were evacuated from the center when troops arrived to repel the attack.

Major General Sher Afgan, the chief of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Balochistan, who led the counter-operation, said that communications intercepts showed the militants belonged to a militant group which is affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban.

A police truck is seen at a gate to the Police Training Center after an attack on the center in Quetta, Pakistan October 25, 2016.

"They were in communication with operatives in Afghanistan," he added, noting that the group itself has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Provincial Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti noted that two of the attacker died after the detonated their explosives while the third was killed by security forces, adding that most of the casualties were the result of blasts.

Pakistan has been battling al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and pro-Taliban militants for years, especially after the US-led invasion in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001 and the subsequent spillover of militancy into the region.

In June 2014, the Pakistani army intensified its anti-militancy efforts by deploying some 30,000 troops near the border with Afghanistan to wipe out militant bases in the tribal area and bring an end to the bloody militancy.

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