By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces have killed 74 militants in operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, two provinces bordering Afghanistan, where violence has surged since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the army’s media wing, said on Friday that 43 of those killed died in intelligence-based operations over the past 48 hours in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), in the northwest. It said 35 were killed in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan district, and eight in Orakzai district.
A further 31 were killed in Balochistan, in the southwest, since 3 November, during a comprehensive “sanitisation” operation in the Kurram area of Quetta district.
The ISPR said “intense and fierce exchanges of fire” took place in KP, dealing a “significant blow” to militant networks there. Troops also recovered a large cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives, including homemade explosives and improvised explosive devices, which the military said the militants had intended to use in attacks. Clearance operations were continuing, it added.
The military described those killed in KP as members of Fitna al-Khawarij, its official term for the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). It said those killed in Balochistan belonged to Fitna al-Hindustan, the label the state applies to Baloch separatist groups. The military accuses India of funding both.
The ISPR said its counterterrorism campaign, known as Azm-i-Istehkam, would continue “at full pace” until what it called foreign-sponsored terrorism was wiped out.
The announcement comes two days after the TTP claimed responsibility for an attack on 11 November that killed 10 Pakistani police officers. Militant violence has been rising. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) recorded 49 militant attacks nationwide between 30 October and 5 November, up from 31 the previous week. They left 25 people dead and 21 injured.
The Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) found that KP and Balochistan together accounted for nearly 96 percent of violence-related deaths in the second quarter of 2026. KP was the worst affected, with 475 deaths, more than 61 per ent of the national total, and 151 incidents, or 57 percent. Balochistan recorded 265 deaths, 34 percent, and 94 incidents, 35 percent.
Islamabad blames the Afghan Taliban government for sheltering TTP terrorists and allowing them to stage attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians. Kabul denies the allegation and says Pakistan should resolve its security problems internally.
The dispute has spilled onto the frontier. Taliban and Pakistani forces have clashed repeatedly along the border since 29 October, and Pakistan said on 5 November that it had foiled a TTP infiltration attempt in the Shalozan sector of Kurram district in KP. Border closures have badly hurt commerce: figures from the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan show bilateral trade fell 95 percent in the 2026 fiscal year.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
