By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces have killed nine militants, including four senior commanders, in intelligence-led operations in North Waziristan, security sources and state media said on Thursday.
The raids targeted the Palangzai, Nadeem Kot and Kot Khazri areas of the district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan. Several hideouts were destroyed, and a large quantity of weapons and ammunition was recovered, the sources said. They named the four commanders as Khalid Raza, Kamran, Musa and Maftoon. The dead were described as members of Fitna al-Khawarij, the term the state uses for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
It was the third consecutive day on which authorities announced a major operation in North Waziristan. On Wednesday, security sources said 13 militants were killed in the district and adjoining areas. Another five died in an operation in Mastung, in Balochistan, against what officials call Fitna al-Hindustan, the label for Baloch separatist groups Islamabad accuses of Indian backing. India has previously rejected such allegations. Five more were reported killed in North Waziristan on Tuesday.
Counting an announcement of seven deaths on 2 October and eight TTP militants reported killed in Dera Ismail Khan on 4 October, officials have claimed more than 45 militant deaths in a week.
The announcements follow a sharp deterioration in security. Pakistan recorded 225 militant attacks in September, the highest monthly figure in 12 years, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS). The Islamabad-based think tank also said 103 security personnel were killed and that kidnappings linked to militancy were at a ten-year high. The total was up 13 per cent on August’s 199 attacks, and attacks have now risen for three consecutive months.
On 26 September, a suicide blast at the Aman Mela police checkpost in Darazinda tehsil, Dera Ismail Khan, killed 12 people and injured 35. Eight days earlier, an attack on the old Police Lines in Kohat killed 23 people and injured about 100.
Islamabad blames much of the violence on militants operating from Afghanistan and says the Afghan Taliban authorities have failed to act. Violence has risen sharply since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Pakistan and Afghanistan fought deadly border clashes in October 2025 that killed more than 70 people, and a ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey did not produce a lasting settlement. Despite repeated rounds of talks, the two sides remain divided over the issue.
Tensions have continued to rise this week. The Pakistani army’s spokesman accused an Afghan Taliban governor of hosting militant groups to discuss escalating attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan government denied the claim. The US-based Long War Journal reported another round of Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan last week.
At regional talks in Moscow on Monday, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, said more than 4,700 Pakistanis had been killed in the past three years by terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, and accused the Taliban of complicity. The Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, attended, and Russia’s envoy said Moscow was ready to help ease tensions. A Taliban official said before the meeting that no bilateral session with Pakistan had been requested.
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