By Staff Reporter
QUETTA: Security forces killed six suspected militants and detained nine others during a raid in a remote part of Balochistan on Tuesday, the country’s state broadcaster said, in the latest action of a counter-insurgency campaign that has intensified sharply across the province in recent weeks.
Radio Pakistan reported that the operation, codenamed Shaban-2, took place in the Saran Tangi area and was launched on the basis of intelligence about militants belonging to Fitna al Hindustan. Security forces said they had also recovered a large quantity of weapons and ammunition from the raid.
The broadcaster, citing unnamed security sources, gave no independent detail of how the raid unfolded or how those killed had been identified, a pattern typical of reporting on operations in Balochistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif both issued statements praising the troops involved. Zardari commended the “bravery and professional skills” of the security forces for “thwarting the terrorists’ objectives”, and said the campaign against foreign-backed terrorism would not let up. The prime minister, in a separate statement, said the wider operation would continue “until the complete elimination of terrorism from the country” and that any attempt to undermine Pakistan’s stability would be “thwarted with full force.”
The group Fitna al Hindustan, blamed for the violence, is the name the government has used since 2025 for insurgent factions operating in Balochistan — chiefly separatist outfits such as the Baloch Liberation Army — that Islamabad alleges are financed and directed by India’s intelligence services. Islamabad has designated multiple active militant groups under the term while alleging they operate under Indian direction.
Tuesday’s raid is one of several operations conducted in Balochistan in the space of a week. On Monday, forces killed four terrorists during operations in two Panjgur district areas, while separate operations last week killed 11 terrorists in Panjgur and Chagai districts.
The frequency of such raids reflects a marked deterioration in the province’s security picture. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies recorded 89 attacks in Balochistan in August, up seven percent on the 83 recorded in July.
The province is not the only front. Two days before Tuesday’s raid, a Pakistan Army convoy came under attack in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in an ambush that killed six security personnel, including two young officers who were leading their troops from the front. The military identified the dead as Captain Abuzar Farooq, 23, of Gujranwala, and Lieutenant Sheraz Babar, 22, of Chakwal, alongside three sepoys and a non-combatant. The military’s media wing, ISPR, said troops killed eight militants in the ensuing firefight, whom it attributed to the Pakistani Taliban, a group it refers to as Fitna al Khawarij.
That clash followed a bloody stretch in the northwest even by recent standards: security forces killed ten militants in multiple engagements in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between 15 and 17 September, with six further soldiers losing their lives in the process.
Figures compiled by the Centre for Research and Security Studies underline how concentrated the violence has become in Pakistan’s two western provinces. The centre found that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan together accounted for almost 96 percent of conflict-related deaths nationwide in the second quarter of 2026, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recording 475 fatalities — more than 61 percent of the total — and Balochistan a further 265, or 34 percent. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also registered the highest number of violent incidents, with 151 cases making up 57 percent of those reported across the country.
Analysts trace the surge in both provinces to the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in Kabul in 2021, which is widely believed to have given Pakistani Taliban fighters freer rein along the border. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Kabul of sheltering militants who then cross into Pakistani territory to carry out attacks, a charge the Afghan Taliban government denies.
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