United News of Bangladesh

At least 10 members of Pakistan’s security forces were killed and dozens of insurgents died as armed groups launched nearly a dozen coordinated attacks across the country’s southern Balochistan province early Saturday, targeting prisons, police stations and paramilitary facilities, officials said. Authorities said gunmen armed with firearms and grenades struck multiple high-security sites almost simultaneously, triggering fierce gunbattles. Security forces killed at least 37 attackers while repelling most of the assaults. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi confirmed the deaths of 10 security personnel in a statement, while praising the response by law enforcement agencies. He said forces came under attack at several locations but managed to eliminate dozens of militants. Naqvi alleged the violence was carried out by Indian-backed “Fitna al-Hindustan,” a term the government uses to describe the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, along with other separatist groups. Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said the majority of the attacks were thwarted. The assaults came a day after the military announced that security forces had raided two militant hideouts elsewhere in the southwest this week, killing 41 insurgents in separate operations. Police and government officials said attackers also sabotaged railway tracks, forcing Pakistan Railways to suspend train services linking Balochistan with other parts of the country. Provincial Health Minister Bakht Muhammad Kakar said the attacks began almost at the same time across the province. In Quetta, the provincial capital, two police officers were killed when militants hurled a grenade at a police vehicle. Following the violence, the government declared an emergency at all hospitals. In Mastung district, dozens of insurgents stormed a prison and freed more than 30 inmates, police said. In Nushki district, militants attempted to overrun the provincial headquarters of paramilitary forces, but the attack was repelled. Local officials said attackers also threw grenades at the office of a government administrator in Dalbandin district, though security forces responded swiftly and forced them to retreat. Assaults on security posts in Balincha, Tump and Kharan districts were foiled, while in Pasni and Gwadar, militants attempted to abduct passengers from buses traveling along highways. Kakar blamed the wave of violence on the BLA, which is banned in Pakistan and designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Islamabad has long accused the group of receiving backing from India, a charge New Delhi has denied. Pakistan has also repeatedly said that Baloch separatists, the Pakistani Taliban and other militants operate from Afghan soil to carry out attacks inside the country, an allegation Kabul rejects. Attacks by Baloch separatist groups and the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have surged in recent months. The TTP is a separate organization but maintains close ties with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021. Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least populated province, has for decades been plagued by an insurgency led by separatist groups seeking independence from the central government in Islamabad.

Taliban militants killed four police officers by targeting a police vehicle with a roadside bomb and wounded six in an attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan early Thursday, police and the insurgents said. The bomb killed four officers in a police vehicle carrying reinforcements sent to respond to the attack on a police station in Lakki Marwat, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. Six officers were wounded in the attack at the police station. Local police officer Ashfaq Khan said a search was underway for the militant suspects who attacked the police station in Lakki Marwat and later targeted the police vehicle with a bomb. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks. The group know as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP is separate but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. There has been an uptick in attacks in Pakistan after the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with the government of Pakistan. TTP has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 when U.S. and NATO troops were leaving the country after 20 years of war. Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuaries in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. Pakistan has seen innumerable militant attacks in the past two decades but there has been an uptick since November, when the TTP ended a monthslong Afghan Taliban-brokered cease-fire with the government of Pakistan.