29 Killed as Pakistani Forces Launch Operation Along Afghan Border

Pakistani military and police security forces launched a major operation along the Afghanistan border on Sunday night, leaving 29 people dead.

Pakistan's Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Attaullah Tarar, confirmed the development in a post on the social media platform X. Tarar stated that the operation was conducted based on specific intelligence to counter a recent series of attacks by Afghan terrorists in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh provinces.

The deceased terrorists were all members of the banned militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Modeled after the Afghan Taliban ideologically, the group was formed in Pakistan two and a half decades ago and was banned by the Pakistani government several years ago. Officially, the government refers to this outfit as 'Fitna al-Khawarij.' In his X post, Attaullah Tarar also referred to the deceased as members of Fitna al-Khawarij.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Armed Forces, stated in a separate press release that the decision to launch Sunday's operation followed a terrorist attack on Saturday night. In that incident, militants targeted the provincial headquarters of the Pakistan Rangers Sindh in the Gulistan-e-Johar area of Karachi, killing three Rangers officials.

The ISPR statement added that when terrorists attacked the Rangers headquarters on Saturday, the Rangers personnel retaliated, killing three terrorists and injuring one. The injured terrorist was arrested, and during interrogation, revealed that they belonged to a distinct faction called 'Jamaat-ul-Ahrar'—an affiliate branch of the TTP.

Bajaur is one of the nine districts out of 40 in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that shares a border with Afghanistan. According to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar's post, Sunday's operation targeted the hideouts and installations of TTP (alias 'Fitna al-Khawarij') and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militants across the Bajaur border. Tarar disclosed that a high-ranking TTP commander, Khan Farosh aka Jabal, was killed in the security forces' firing. The minister claimed that Khan Farosh was a top organizer for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.

Despite sharing historical, religious, and cultural ties, relations between the two South Asian neighbors, Pakistan and Afghanistan, have severely deteriorated over the last five years due to the TTP issue—especially after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad alleges that the Afghan Taliban government provides full logistical and safe-haven support to the TTP to perpetrate terrorism inside Pakistan, a charge the Taliban government consistently denies.

Although several rounds of high-level ministerial and official meetings have taken place in recent years to resolve the issue, no solution has been reached. Tensions escalated further on February 26, when the Afghan military launched a surprise cross-border attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing several Pakistani soldiers and abducting a few others alive.

Immediately following that incident, Pakistan effectively declared war against the cross-border militancy. Pakistan's Defense Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, announced that the Pakistani military was launching 'Operation Ghazab-lil-Haq' to rescue the abducted soldiers and retaliate against the attacks.

In his post on Sunday, Attaullah Tarar confirmed that the latest raid by security forces along the Bajaur border was executed as part of Operation Ghazab-lil-Haq.
Source: Dawn