By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces had killed 19 militants in a series of operations across Balochistan, as a soldier martyred in the fighting and the province’s chief paramilitary force separately reported the hijacking of a charity ambulance.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the army’s media wing, said the bulk of the deaths came during a clearance operation in the Shaban area of Quetta district that has been under way since Sunday. Intelligence agencies had identified multiple hideouts there belonging to groups Fitna al Khawarij and Fitna al Hindustan — the state’s official designations for, respectively, the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and a cluster of Balochistan-based separatist networks it accuses India of sponsoring. Islamabad has used both terms with growing frequency this year as it seeks to frame the insurgency in its restive south-western province as a proxy conflict directed from New Delhi.
According to the ISPR statement, troops “effectively engaged and cleared multiple terrorist hideouts” in Shaban following “an intense exchange of fire,” in which 13 fighters were killed. Weapons, ammunition and explosives were recovered from the sites, and the military said the operation would continue “until the complete neutralisation of the threat in the area.”
A further six militants were killed in separate, pre-emptive intelligence-led raids carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday in the districts of Kech and western Quetta, the ISPR added. It was during one of those engagements that Subedar Muhammad Jamil, 39, from Taunsa Sharif in Dera Ghazi Khan district, was killed. The military described him as having “embraced martyrdom,” the term routinely used in Pakistan for security personnel who die in action, and said the wider counter-insurgency campaign — run under the banner “Azm-e-Istehkam,” a strategy endorsed by the Federal Apex Committee on the National Action Plan — would proceed “at full pace.”
The toll was quickly seized on by Pakistan’s civilian leadership. President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif both issued statements praising the operations, with Zardari calling the killings evidence of the “professional capabilities” of the armed forces and Mr Sharif vowing that “foreign-sponsored terrorism will be eliminated at all costs.” Both men offered condolences over Subedar Jamil’s death; the prime minister said his sacrifice was “a matter of immense pride for the whole nation.”
The Shaban and Kech operations were not the only violence reported in the province on Wednesday. State broadcasters said security forces had also moved against militants elsewhere as part of a wider effort designated Raddul Fitna-3. In Mastung, nine people were reported killed after allegedly attempting to storm a security checkpost; heavy weapons, ammunition and three motorcycles were said to have been recovered. In Turbat’s Jausak area, two further militants said to belong to Fitna al Hindustan were killed in a separate intelligence-based raid.
Police in Quetta reported a parallel clash in the early hours of Wednesday, after gunmen attempted to attack a police station in the Aghbarg area on the city’s outskirts. Officers returned fire, according to Saddar Senior Superintendent of Police Shafqat Janjua, killing five men he said belonged to the TTP. The attackers had arrived by motorcycle, he said, adding that the assault had been repelled and weapons seized.
Separately, the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest charitable ambulance network, said one of its vehicles had been hijacked by armed men in Balochistan on Wednesday morning. In a statement, the charity said the ambulance was returning to its centre in Kalat at around 7.15am, having transported the body of a woman from an area near Gidar, roughly 110 kilometres away, when unidentified gunmen assaulted the driver and seized the vehicle. No further details on the attackers or the ambulance’s whereabouts were immediately available.
Wednesday’s reported death toll adds to a mounting run of operations in Balochistan through September. Radio Pakistan reported on Tuesday that six militants were killed and nine suspects detained in the Saran Tangi area, while four more were reported killed in Panjgur district on Monday. The previous week, the military said 11 militants had been killed in the districts of Panjgur and Chagai.
The scale of the violence reflects a broader deterioration in security across the province. According to a monthly assessment by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, the number of terrorist attacks recorded in Balochistan rose by seven per cent between July and August, from 83 incidents to 89. Balochistan, rich in mineral and coastal resources but chronically under-developed, has for decades been the site of a low-level separatist insurgency, compounded in recent years by the resurgence of the TTP along the Afghan border.
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