By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: Security forces have killed eight suspected militants, including three senior commanders, in an intelligence-led operation in the north-west of the country, security sources said on Sunday.
The operation in Dera Ismail Khan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was launched after security forces received information that militants were present in the area. The sources said a large quantity of weapons and ammunition, together with foreign currency, was recovered from the dead.
The militants were members of Fitna al-Khawarij, the term the state uses for the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The sources said the raid was carried out under Azm-i-Istehkam, a counter-terrorism campaign launched in June 2024 that the government presents as a national drive to root out extremism. Security forces, they said, remained committed to eliminating terrorism and restoring “lasting peace” across the country.
The operation came eight days after one of the deadliest recent attacks in the district. On 26 September a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a police checkpoint in the Darazinda area of Dera Ismail Khan, and the TTP claimed responsibility. At least 12 people were killed and 35 injured in the blast at the joint checkpoint near Aman Mela. Gunfire was also heard after the explosion, and reports said gunmen fired on an ambulance. Death tolls in early reports varied, and some later accounts put the figure higher.
That attack deepened tensions with Kabul. Pakistan had carried out strikes on suspected militant hideouts inside Afghanistan, and it has repeatedly accused the Afghan government of letting TTP fighters operate from its territory. The TTP is a separate organisation from the Afghan Taliban, but the two are ideologically aligned. Violence in Pakistan has risen since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021.
The attack on the checkpoint was not the worst of the month. On 18 September a suicide bomb and gun assault on a mosque inside the old Police Lines compound in Kohat killed 23 people and injured more than 100, most of them police officers attending Friday prayers. Eight attackers were killed in an overnight clearance operation. Ittihadul Mujahideen Pakistan, led by the Afghanistan-based militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed responsibility.
Officials say the pace of operations has picked up. State media and security sources have reported a near-daily run of raids in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the past week. Four militants were reported killed in Dera Ismail Khan on Monday and five in Bara on Tuesday. Three died in Mir Ali on Wednesday, seven in the Eidak area of North Waziristan on Friday, and five in South Waziristan on Saturday. Together with Sunday’s eight, that makes more than 30 killed in a week, by the authorities’ own count.
The province has also seen sustained attacks on security personnel. Data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies recorded 54 terrorist attacks in August, excluding the merged districts, against 36 in July, a rise of 50 percent. In Hangu district, a captain and a lieutenant were among six security personnel killed in an exchange of fire in which eight militants also died.
Violence has not been confined to the north-west. On 1 September, six personnel, including two officers, and a customs official were killed as forces repelled an attempt to storm the Customs House in Balochistan. In July, at least 30 people, 27 of them police officers, were killed in an ambush in the Kach Mangi area of Ziarat. Several civilians and police were also abducted. A joint operation by the army, Frontier Corps and Balochistan police launched afterwards is still under way.
