By Staff Reporter
QUETTA: Security forces killed 10 militants and captured two female suicide bombers along with a man accused of facilitating them, in a fresh round of operations across two districts of restive Balochistan province, the military said on Wednesday.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the armed forces’ media wing, said the killings took place over 48 hours in Surab and Mastung districts, with seven militants killed in Surab and a further three in Mastung. It was in Mastung that troops also apprehended the two women, both alleged suicide bombers, together with the man accused of facilitating their attack.
According to the ISPR, all three detained in Mastung belonged to the network of Fitna al-Hindustan — the label Pakistan’s state apparatus has adopted for Balochistan-based armed groups it accuses of acting on India’s behalf. The military uses a separate term, Fitna al-Khawarij, for the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Troops recovered weapons, ammunition and improvised explosive devices during the raids, the statement said, without giving further details of how the operations were carried out or naming those killed or detained.
“Sanitisation operations are being conducted to eliminate any other India-sponsored terrorist found in the area,” the ISPR said, adding that the campaign would continue “at full pace” under the government’s Azm-i-Istehkam strategy, a counter-terrorism policy approved by the Federal Apex Committee on the National Action Plan.
The latest raids fall under Operation Shaban, a joint offensive by the Pakistan Army, the Frontier Corps and Balochistan Police that was launched earlier this month after gunmen stormed a police post at the Mangi Dam pumping station in Ziarat on 6 July, killing 27 officers in one of the deadliest single attacks on security personnel in the province this year.
The assault on Ziarat came within days of two other attacks that senior military officials have since linked to the same networks — an armed raid on the outskirts of Quetta on 5 July and an ambush on an army convoy in Bela on 7 July. Addressing reporters shortly afterwards, the ISPR’s director general, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said all three had been traced back to India and Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif followed with his own remarks on 9 July, telling a meeting of the Provincial Apex Committee in Quetta that Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership had reached what he called a “mutual and singular decision” to end terrorism in the province. He was joined at the meeting by Field Marshal Asim Munir, the army chief and Chief of Defence Forces.
The violence has been building for months. A security assessment published in early June by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies found that the country’s overall security situation worsened sharply in May after two months of gradual improvement, driven largely by a rise in attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Balochistan bore the brunt of it: the province recorded 71 attacks in May, up from 34 in April, a rise of 109 per cent. Kidnappings surged too — of 54 abductions reported across Pakistan that month, 52 took place in Balochistan, a pattern the report’s authors said pointed to the growing confidence and operational reach of armed groups there.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by area but among its poorest and least populated, has for years been the site of a low-level insurgency fought by ethnic Baloch separatist groups alongside sporadic activity by Islamist militants, including remnants of the Pakistani Taliban.
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