ISLAMABAD: Pakistani security forces have killed 17 militants in multiple intelligence-based operations (IBOs) in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and southwestern Balochistan provinces, the Pakistani military said on Friday.
The intelligence-based operations came days after ethnic Baloch insurgents hit several civil and military targets in a string of coordinated attacks in Balochistan, killing more than 50 people.
Five militants were killed and three others injured in operations conducted in Balochistan’s Kech, Panjgur and Zhob districts on August 29-30, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing.
Another 12 militants were killed in Tirah Valley of KP’s Khyber tribal district on August 28-29, which brought the number of militants killed in the region since Aug. 20 to 37, while 14 others suffered injuries.
“The IBOs will continue till peace in the area is restored,” the ISPR said in a statement. “Security forces of Pakistan are determined to wipe out the menace of terrorism from the country.”
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, has witnessed a number of attacks on police, security forces and anti-polio vaccination teams in recent months, most of them claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Balochistan, which shares its border with Iran and Afghanistan, has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatist militants for the last two decades.
Many of Sunday’s attacks were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of separatist groups waging a war of independence against the state, which it accuses of unfair exploitation of resources in the mineral-rich region. The government denies this.
Islamabad has blamed a number of recent attacks on militants operating out of neighboring Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegations and says rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad.
