ISLAMABAD: Five Pakistani soldiers and three militants were killed during an operation in the country’s southwestern Balochistan province, the Pakistani military said late Saturday. 

Security forces were conducting an operation in Buleda area of Balochistan’s Kech District, when militants targeted their vehicle with an improvised explosive device (IED), according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing.

The explosion was followed by an exchange of gunfire between the two sides, in which three militants were killed. 

“However, during the operation, five brave soldiers, having fought gallantly, sacrificed their lives and embraced shahadat (martyrdom),” the ISPR said in a statement. 

“Sanitization operation is being carried out to eliminate any other terrorists found in the area.” 

Pakistan has been witnessing a spike in militant violence in its northwestern and southwestern regions that border Afghanistan, particularly after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) called off its fragile truce with the government in Islamabad in November 2022. 

The militant group, which is said to have sanctuaries in neighboring Afghanistan, is separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban. 

Earlier in the day, Pakistani security forces killed four militants involved in target killings and extortion activities in two separate intelligence-based operations in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said. 

Last year, a total of 306 militant attacks took place in Pakistan, including 23 suicide bombings, which killed 693 people and injured 1,124 others, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based research and advocacy think-tank. 

About 93 percent of all these attacks were concentrated in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces. The rise in attacks forced Pakistan to order expulsion of all illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, in Oct. 2023.