FACTBOX: Brazen commando-style attacks grow in South Asia

(Reuters) - Militants armed with guns and grenades stormed a police training center in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, killing at least 10 policemen, officials said.

The operation is the latest across South Asia that suggests militants are increasingly using commando-style attacks to inflict maximum casualties and show they can strike anywhere at will.

The following are recent sophisticated and brazen attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India over the past four months.

March 30 - A group of attackers were holed up in a police training center in Lahore after storming the building and killing at least eight policemen, officials said. It is not clear how many, if any, police inside the center were being held hostage.

March 3 - A dozen gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team with rifles, grenades and rockets, wounding six players and a British coach and killing at least eight Pakistanis in Lahore.

The attackers fired AK-47s and rockets and hurled grenades at Sri Lanka's team bus as it was being driven to Lahore's Gaddafi stadium for the third day of a match against Pakistan. They then escaped after a firefight with police that lasted 30 minutes and have not been found.

Feb 11 - Taliban militants killed 20 people in three simultaneous attacks on government buildings inside the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The militants' aim appeared to be to shoot dead as many people as possible before blowing themselves up, a style of attack with similarities to that seen in the Indian city of Mumbai in November.

Separate groups of militants attempted to storm three government buildings in Kabul. All were armed with assault rifles and wearing suicide bomb vests.

Nov 26-29 - Islamist gunmen attack India's financial capital, Mumbai, killing 166 people.

The gunmen attacked Mumbai's top two luxury hotels, its biggest railway station and other symbols of India's financial might with grenades and assault rifles. Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage. Foreigners were among the dead.

India blamed Pakistani militants for the attack.