By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces had killed 48 militants over the previous three days in a series of raids across Balochistan province, the latest and largest tally in a counterterrorism campaign that has intensified as the country’s southwest sinks deeper into violence.
The Inter-Services Public Relations, the military’s media office in a statement said the operations unfolded across four districts — Mastung, Quetta, Kalat and Sibi — and targeted militants belonged to “Fitna al-Hindustan” and “Fitna al-Khawarij,” terms Pakistani officials use for Baloch separatist groups and the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, respectively. The military maintains that India sponsors and directs the separatist violence in Balochistan, an allegation New Delhi has repeatedly denied.
The single deadliest raid took place in the Shaban area of Quetta district, where the military said troops located four militant hideouts and killed 26 terrorists in an exchange of gunfire. In Mastung, the military said security forces intercepted a group of six “Indian-sponsored terrorists” and killed them in a firefight, later recovering and destroying a cache of ammunition and improvised explosive devices. Two more militants were reported killed during a raid on a hideout in Kalat district.
The ISPR said its tally also included 12 militants the military reported killing in a separate raid in Kalat on Sept. 2, and framed the total — 48 dead over 48 to 72 hours — as evidence of a “high-tempo” campaign against the province’s array of armed groups.
Attack on police station repelled
The latest raids came as authorities in Balochistan disclosed a separate and considerably more dangerous episode: a coordinated assault by dozens of militants on a police station, a bank branch and a government office in the town of Bhag, in Sibi district.
Shahid Rind, an aide to Balochistan’s chief minister for political and media affairs, wrote on social media that roughly 40 attackers struck the three sites using rocket launchers, sniper rifles, machine guns and hand grenades. Police, aided by a protective wall around the station, held off the assault for nearly two hours before the attackers withdrew, Rind said. He said officers prevented the militants from seizing the station or looting weapons, and that a bomb disposal team defused an explosive device the attackers had planted at the bank. Two police officers and three civilians were wounded, according to Rind, who said all five were receiving medical treatment. “Bhag police proved that terrorists would not be allowed to challenge the writ of the state,” he said.
A province under strain
The reported operations arrive against a backdrop of a marked escalation in violence across Balochistan and neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the two regions that have borne the brunt of Pakistan’s militant unrest since the Taliban returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.
The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based research group that tracks militant violence, found that attacks in Balochistan rose 7 percent in August, to 89, from 83 in July. The same group has previously reported that July was the deadliest month of 2026 nationwide, with at least 606 people killed in militant attacks and security operations, and that Balochistan’s death toll alone rose 241 percent between June and July, from 109 to 372.
A separate analysis by the Centre for Research and Security Studies found that Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa together accounted for nearly 96 percent of the country’s violence-related deaths in the second quarter of the year, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the harder hit of the two provinces. Balochistan alone recorded 265 deaths and 94 attacks during the same period, the group found.
The unrest in Balochistan predates the current wave of operations by decades. Ethnic Baloch separatist groups, including the Baloch Liberation Army and the Baloch Liberation Front, have fought an on-and-off insurgency for years, accusing Islamabad of extracting the province’s natural gas and mineral wealth — Balochistan is rich in both — while leaving its population, among the poorest in Pakistan, without commensurate investment in return. The province is also the site of the Reko Diq copper and gold project and forms a key corridor for Chinese-backed infrastructure development, both of which separatist groups have targeted in past attacks; a convoy of empty vehicles traveling from the Reko Diq site came under attack last week in the same district where militants were reported killed Friday.
The federal government disputes the characterization that it has neglected the province, pointing to development spending and to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a network of roads, energy projects and other infrastructure built with Chinese financing. Officials argue that separatist attacks on workers and construction sites have themselves impeded the development the militants say they are fighting for.
The latest violence follows a similar pattern. On the night of Aug. 31 into Sept. 1, according to the ISPR, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorists attacked a customs facility along the N-50 highway in Pishin district; the military said its forces killed 10 attackers, though two officers were among six security personnel killed in the exchange. That same day, the military reported killing 11 Indian-linked terrorists after the group set up an illegal checkpoint on the Quetta-Taftan highway in Chagai district — a checkpoint the military said the militants were using to extort passing vehicles, including, in one instance it cited, that Reko Diq convoy. Two additional militants were reported killed the same day in a raid in Washuk district.
The ISPR said the current effort is part of a broader campaign it calls “Azm-e-Istehkam,” or Resolve for Stability, and sanitization operations were continuing in the districts where Friday’s raids took place to root out any remaining fighters.
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