ISLAMABAD: A Pakistan army major was killed during a heavy exchange of fire with militants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province’s Khyber district on Thursday morning, while three militants were arrested, the army’s media wing confirmed in a statement.
According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), security forces initiated an intelligence-based operation in the general area of Shakhas in the Khyber district on the night of July 5 upon the reported presence of militants there. The operation continued until the morning of July 6. It added that Major Mian Abdullah Shah, who was leading the operation, saw some militants while security forces were blocking the escape route.
“As a result of heavy exchange of fire, the brave son of the nation, Major Mian Abdullah Shah, aged 33 and resident of Kohat, having fought gallantly, embraced shahadat [martyrdom],” the ISPR said.
“Three terrorists and their facilitators were apprehended, while the sanitization of the area is being carried out to eliminate the terrorists present in the area.”
Khyber district was a part of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) which was later merged with KP in 2018. The district was for long a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), militants who have carried out some of the deadliest attacks against Pakistan's security forces.
Militancy in the district had declined following Pakistan Army’s operations there, but with the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in 2021, the South Asian country has seen an uptick in violence in areas bordering Afghanistan, particularly after a fragile truce between the TTP and the state broke down in November last year.
The operation was carried out a day after a suicide bomber riding in a vehicle targeted a security checkpoint in the Miran Shah district of KP’s North Waziristan agency, killing at least three soldiers and a 10-year-old boy, while wounding 14 other civilians.
