By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces have killed 11 militants and seized nearly three tonnes of explosives in two operations in restive Balochistan province, the military said, in the latest in a string of raids as the south-western region grapples with a marked rise in violence.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, said troops carried out the intelligence-led operations in the Kharan and Washuk districts on 6 and 7 September respectively, targeting militants belonged to the Indian-backed network Islamabad refers to as Fitna al-Hindustan — a designation the state uses to press its long-standing claim that New Delhi is fuelling unrest across Pakistan.
In the first raid, in Kharan, militants had moved to set up a roadblock and bring local traffic to a halt, the ISPR said. Troops moved in and confronted the group, killing eight of them in the exchange that followed.
The second operation, in neighbouring Washuk district a day later, was described by the military as “deliberately planned” and mounted after intelligence pointed to militants holed up in the area. Soldiers stormed the hideout and, after an intense exchange of fire, killed a further three fighters. Troops recovered 2.9 tonnes of explosive material from the site, which the military said was destined for use in improvised explosive devices.
The ISPR said “sanitisation” operations were continuing in the area to track down any remaining militants, and that the wider campaign against foreign-backed terrorism — carried out under the Azm-i-Istehkam framework endorsed by the Federal Apex Committee on the National Action Plan — would go on without pause.
A province under strain
The twin raids come amid what analysts describe as one of the sharpest escalations in Balochistan’s long-running insurgency in recent memory. Attacks in the province rose seven percent last month, climbing from 83 in July to 89 in August, according to figures compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies — making it the country’s most volatile region through the summer.
The past fortnight alone has brought a succession of major incidents. In the early hours of 1 September, militants from the Pakistani Taliban, commonly known as the TTP, mounted a coordinated assault on a customs facility beside the N-50 highway in Pishin district. Security forces repelled the attack and killed ten militants, the ISPR said, though six of their own personnel — including two officers — were killed in the fighting.
Hours earlier, on 31 August, troops had killed 11 terrorists accused of blocking the N-40 Quetta-Taftan highway in Chagai district, where militants were said to have set up an illegal checkpoint to extort passing traffic. Two days later, on 2 September, a further 12 militants were killed in an operation in Kalat district. And by 4 September, the ISPR was reporting that 36 more militants had been killed across a wave of “high-tempo” raids spanning Mastung, Quetta, Kalat and Sibi districts — among them an operation that headed off an attack on a police station in Sibi’s Bhag area.
Data compiled separately by the Centre for Research and Security Studies underscores how heavily the violence is now concentrated in just two provinces. Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa together accounted for close to 96 percent of all conflict-related deaths recorded nationally in the second quarter of the year, the group found, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the worse-affected of the two: it recorded 475 deaths, or just over 61 percent of the total, against 265, or 34 percent, in Balochistan. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also logged the highest number of individual attacks, 151 in all, or 57 percent of the nationwide count, with Balochistan accounting for a further 94, or 35 percent. The surge in both provinces has been building since 2021, when the Taliban’s return to power in neighbouring Afghanistan is widely held to have emboldened militant groups operating along the border and beyond.
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