By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan suffered its highest annual toll of security and law enforcement personnel in the country’s history in 2025, a government minister told parliament on Monday, as Islamabad grappled with a surge in militant attacks that he described as the “peak” of terrorism in the nation.
State Minister for Interior Tallal Chaudhry told the National Assembly that more than 1,020 law enforcement and security personnel had been killed in militant violence during the year, alongside 783 civilians, in what he said was an unprecedented toll since Pakistan first began confronting Islamist militancy around the turn of the century.
“Terrorism has existed since 2000, but 2025 was its peak,” Chaudhry said, adding that 1,890 militants had also been killed during the year — itself a record for a single year. A further 1,763 civilians were wounded in the violence.
Authorities recorded 3,355 militant incidents during the year, with 95 percent concentrated in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and southwestern Balochistan, both of which border Afghanistan. Security forces conducted more than 175,000 intelligence-based operations in response, the minister said.
Pakistan has witnessed a sharp rise in militant attacks in recent years, driven primarily by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, as well as Baloch separatist groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army. Chaudhry said a large number of those killed in security operations were Afghan nationals, and accused armed groups of continuing to infiltrate Pakistan from across the border.
Islamabad has repeatedly blamed Kabul for allowing militant networks to use Afghan territory as a staging ground for attacks inside Pakistan, a charge the Taliban government in Kabul rejects. Pakistan also accuses India of supporting separatist and militant groups operating on its soil — an allegation New Delhi denies.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have deteriorated sharply over the past year as cross-border violence has intensified, producing some of the most serious military confrontations between the two neighbours in recent memory. Last week, Islamabad said it had shot down an Afghan drone that entered Pakistani airspace, rejecting Kabul’s contention that it had been conducting strikes on Islamic State hideouts in Pakistan’s border regions.
The tensions show little sign of easing. In May, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned that Pakistan was prepared for “open war” with Afghanistan if Kabul did not move to prevent militants from launching attacks across the frontier.
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