ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military said on Wednesday 38 security personnel and four civilians had been killed in three major militant attacks in the southwestern province of Balochistan over the past four days, as security forces battled insurgents in one of the country’s deadliest outbreaks of violence in recent months.
The attacks underscore the worsening security situation in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least populated province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. The province has long faced a separatist insurgency led by the banned Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), while the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has also intensified attacks in the region.
Pakistan says the two militant groups have increasingly exploited safe havens across the Afghan border, an allegation the Taliban administration in Kabul denies. Islamabad also accuses India of supporting militant groups operating inside Pakistan, a charge New Delhi rejects.
Briefing the media on Wednesday, military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said security forces had killed 54 militants in operations linked to the three attacks while fighting was continuing in parts of Balochistan.
“So in the three major operations that I told you about, four civilians first and then our police and army personnel were martyred later, the total number of martyrdoms are 42,” Chaudhry told a news conference.
According to the military, the first attack took place on July 4 and 5 in the Hanna Urak valley near Quetta, where TTP militants attacked local villagers, killing four civilians and injuring six others.
The second attack occurred on July 6 when TTP militants assaulted a police checkpoint guarding the Mangi Dam in Ziarat district. Chaudhry said nine police officers were killed in the initial assault, while security forces killed 15 militants.
He said militants also captured around 18 police personnel during the operation and killed them before security forces could reach them. Eleven more militants were later killed as fighting continued.
The third attack took place on Wednesday in the Bela and Winder areas of Balochistan, where members of the banned BLA attacked an army convoy, Chaudhry said. Eleven soldiers and 14 militants were killed in the fighting, while security forces also killed six TTP militants in Kharan and eight more in Dalbandin.
The military spokesman accused India and what he described as “other powers” opposed to Pakistan’s stability of supporting militant violence.
“And they are using the territories under the control of this illegitimate Afghan Taliban regime as a base of operation,” he said.
“And the majority of the people, once we encounter them, we kill them, we engage them, they are Afghans.”
India denies Pakistan’s allegations that it supports militant attacks inside the country. Afghanistan’s Taliban administration has also repeatedly rejected Islamabad’s accusations that it allows militant groups to use Afghan territory to stage cross-border attacks.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have deteriorated sharply over the past year as Islamabad has accused Kabul of failing to curb the activities of the TTP. The worsening tensions have led to border closures, exchanges of fire between security forces and Pakistani airstrikes targeting suspected militant hideouts inside Afghanistan.
