PESHAWAR: Dozens of heavily armed Taleban fighters freed nearly 250 prisoners, including hardcore militants, during a sophisticated overnight attack on a Pakistani jail that killed 13 people, officials said Tuesday.

Armed with guns, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and bombs, the Taleban bombarded the prison in the town of Dera Ismail Khan before escaping with scores of inmates after a three-hour shootout.

The attack by well-trained gunmen, disguised in police uniforms, will heighten concerns about the ability of the Taleban to operate with impunity in parts of the nuclear-armed state.

They appeared easily to overpower police on duty at the prison hours before the country began electing a new head of state to replace President Asif Ali Zardari, who is ending a five-year term.

Zardari’s party lost general elections in May and has boycotted Tuesday’s presidential vote, leading to the certain victory of Mamnoon Hussain, a close ally of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

At least 248 prisoners escaped, of whom six were later re-arrested, senior government official Mushtaq Jadoon told ARY television, describing about 30 of them as “hardcore militants.”

Malik Qasim, prisons adviser to the chief minister of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, confirmed that 248 had escaped.

He said five female inmates were taken away with one female constable. The Central Prison in Dera Ismail Khan can hold up to 5,000 inmates and around 300 were being held in connection with attacks on security forces and sectarian killings.

But it was not clear how many were present during the assault, which began late Monday and ended early Tuesday.

The city in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is close to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt bordering Afghanistan where Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents are most active.

The prison break came after more than 1,000 inmates, mostly common criminals, escaped from a Libyan jail in the city of Benghazi during a riot on Saturday.

Last week, militants attacked two prisons in Iraq, freeing at least 500 inmates in bomb, mortar and gun assaults that killed more than 40 people north and west of the capital Baghdad.

The chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pervez Khattak, of Pakistan Tahreeke Insaaf party that advocates peace talks with the Taleban, branded the latest attack a failure of intelligence agencies. The Pakistani Taleban, which has led a domestic insurgency since 2007 killing thousands of people, claimed responsibility.

“Some 150 Taleban, including 60 suicide bombers, attacked the Central Prison and managed to free about 300 prisoners,” Taleban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told AFP by telephone.

A security official in the city told AFP the militants arrived in more than a dozen vehicles and that two Taleban commanders were among those who escaped.