By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A senior army officer was killed in an encounter with “hardcore terrorists” in South Waziristan’s Angoor Adda in the latest among several casualties amid a surge in militant attacks in the country’s restive northwest, the military said on Tuesday.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, said in a statement that army Brigadier Mustafa Kamal Barki, serving in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was killed and seven others were injured, including two who were critically wounded.
“Brigadier Mustafa Kamal Barki from Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), while leading the encounter from the front, embraced Shahadat (martyrdom),” the ISPR said on Tuesday.
“Brigadier Barki and his team put up a valiant resistance against the terrorists during the encounter and the officer sacrificed his life for the peace of the motherland.”
“Defence forces of Pakistan and intelligence agencies pledge to reaffirm and demonstrate firm resolve to eliminate the menace of terrorism from every inch of the country,” the ISPR said.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari expressed regret over the incident and said Brigadier Barki had “sacrificed his life for the peace of motherland”, adding that his sacrifice would not go in vain.
“The terrorists will be found out [and] they will have to pay a heavy price,” the foreign minister said.
PTI Chairman Imran Khan also said he was “saddened” to hear of the news and extended his condolences to the brigadier’s family.
The attack comes amid a surge in militant violence in Pakistan in recent months, particularly after the Pakistani Taliban, or the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), called off their fragile ceasefire with the government in November.
The militant group has since targeted police and security forces in the country’s northwestern and southwestern regions that border Afghanistan.
A deadly suicide bombing killed more than 80 people, mostly police officials, at a mosque inside a heavily guarded police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar in January.
The TTP is a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan more than a year ago. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened Pakistani militants, whose top leaders and fighters are said to be hiding across the border.
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