By Staff Reporter
RAWALPINDI: Security forces killed 12 militants in two intelligence-led raids in Balochistan on Wednesday and Thursday, the military said, the latest strikes in a province where attacks have surged for much of this year.
The operations, in the districts of Washuk and Mastung, were carried out under Rad-ul-Fitna-3, the army’s ongoing campaign against Indian-backed militant networks operating in the province, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, said in a statement on Thursday.
Troops picked up the movement of six militants in Washuk on Wednesday and moved to engage them; all six were killed, the ISPR said. A second raid followed on Thursday in Mastung, where soldiers exchanged heavy fire with another six militants, killing all of them and destroying a hideout used by the group.
Both groups were described by the military as belonging to Fitna al-Hindustan, the term Pakistani authorities use for militant organisations they accuse New Delhi of funding and directing as part of a campaign to destabilise the country.
The ISPR said the campaign would continue “at full pace” under Azm-e-Istehkam, the counter-terrorism strategy endorsed last year by the federal government’s Apex Committee on the National Action Plan, Pakistan’s central forum for coordinating action against militancy.
Thursday’s operations came a week after troops killed four militants and destroyed two vehicles rigged as bombs in Khuzdar, another Balochistan district, after intercepting them before they could reach their target.
The raids are the latest sign of a security crisis that has deepened across Balochistan and the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year. Research by the Centre for Research and Security Studies found the two provinces accounted for 96 per cent of all militancy-related deaths recorded nationwide in the second quarter of the year, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the worse affected of the two: 475 deaths, or 61 percent of the total, against 265, or 34 percent, in Balochistan. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also recorded more attacks – 151, or 57 percent of the national total – compared with 94, or 35 percent, in Balochistan.
Militancy in both provinces has intensified since the Taliban returned to power in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021, a shift security analysts say gave allied militant groups freer rein along the border.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by area but among its poorest, has for two decades been the site of a low-level insurgency by separatist groups seeking independence or greater autonomy, as well as attacks by Islamist militants – violence the military says is increasingly being fuelled from abroad.
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