By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Security forces killed 11 militants in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan district during intelligence-based operations over the past 48 hours, the military’s media wing announced on Sunday, the latest strike in a widening counterterrorism push across the country’s volatile northwest and southwest.
In a statement, the Inter-Services Public Relations said the action was part of a continuing series of raids in the region. Security forces engaged multiple militant locations, it said, and after “intense and fierce exchanges of fire,” the 11 fighters — from the India-sponsored Fitna-al-Khawarij, the military’s term for the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan — were neutralized. Weapons and ammunition were recovered from the site.
The militants had been actively involved in numerous terrorist activities in the area, the statement added. Sanitization operations were underway to clear any remaining fighters holed up in the vicinity. The operations fall under the broader counterterrorism strategy known as Azm-i-Istehkam, endorsed by the Federal Apex Committee on the National Action Plan, and are intended to “wipe out the menace of foreign-sponsored and supported terrorism from the country,” the statement said.T
he announcement came against a backdrop of persistent militant violence that has intensified since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. Attacks have frequently targeted Pakistani security personnel and law enforcement in the bordering provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Earlier this week, the military reported killing another 22 India-sponsored militants in North Waziristan. Last week, a major and four other soldiers were killed during a sanitization operation in Balochistan’s Barkhan district. In the follow-up operation there, authorities said three commanders belonging to Balochistan-based terrorist groups were arrested and 35 of their operatives were killed, according to the Balochistan government.
Earlier this month, security forces killed five militants in separate engagements in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Tank and Dera Ismail Khan districts. In early April, eight militants were killed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in North Waziristan. On Sunday, a separate joint operation by the army, police, and Counter Terrorism Department in Bannu district’s Miryan area left at least 16 militants dead, including two ringleaders, security sources said. Two policemen were also killed in the fighting. The operation was launched a day earlier after intelligence indicated militants were present in the area.
Violence spilled into Balochistan’s capital as well. Earlier Sunday, a blast near a railway track at Chaman Phatak in Quetta killed at least 14 people, including three Frontier Corps personnel, and wounded several others, including women and children who were taken to area hospitals, according to Balochistan government spokesman Shahid Rind.
Pakistan has repeatedly pressed the Afghan Taliban regime to prevent its territory from being used as a base for attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul has so far declined to move against the groups responsible, Pakistani officials say. The two countries agreed to a ceasefire last October following border clashes sparked by unprovoked gunfire from the Afghan side at multiple points. Despite multiple rounds of talks, no lasting agreement has been reached. In February, Pakistan launched Operation Ghazab lil-Haq, its most recent major counterterrorism drive, several months after the ceasefire. The military has described the current campaign as relentless, with officials vowing to sustain pressure on militant networks they say continue to receive external support.
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