ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan army said on Monday 71 militants had been killed in three days of armed operations in the country’s northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan where the military has been battling a surge in militancy.

On Sunday, the army said it had killed 54 militants trying to infiltrate the country from Afghanistan, highlighting the challenges its forces face on multiple fronts as tensions with India also rise rapidly.

In a fresh statement on Monday, the army said it had carried out a “sanitization operation” in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the night of Apr. 27-28 following Sunday’s campaigns. 

“During the conduct of the operation, seventeen more khwarij [militants] who were operating on behest of their foreign masters were hunted down and successfully neutralized,” the army said in a statement.

“The number of khwarij killed in three days operation has risen to seventy one.”

The 71 deaths reported are an usually high number in Pakistan’s battle against militancy and instability along its border with Afghanistan during the nearly four years since the United States withdrew its military support from the country and the Taliban took over Kabul.

The banned group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, has intensified attacks on Pakistani security forces, straining ties between Pakistan’s leaders and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of harboring and supporting TTP fighters, an allegation they deny.

Pakistan is also facing an intensifying separatist insurgency in the southwestern Balochistan province. The possibility of conventional skirmishes with nuclear-armed neighbor India to the east have also risen since last week when 26 tourists were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi has blamed Islamabad, which has denied involvement. 

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region is claimed by both the nuclear states, and has been the site of multiple wars, insurgencies and diplomatic standoffs.