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28-05-2024
Bu SJA Jafri + Agencies
ISLAMABAD/ PESHAWAR: Five Pakistani soldiers were martyred in gun-battles with Islamist militants in the country’s northwest bordering Afghanistan on Monday, the Pakistan Army said.
The statement said the deaths were in addition to two other soldiers, including an officer, who were martyred the previous day in an operation against the militants on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar.
It said a total of 23 militants had also been killed in the last two days in what it described as three intelligence-based operations on their hideouts in northwest Pakistan close to the Afghan border.
The militants were “involved in numerous terrorist activities against the security forces as well as the innocent civilians,” the army said.
The five soldiers were killed in Khyber district, it said.
The military didn’t identify what group the militants belonged to.
The lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border have long been a safe haven for the Islamist and sectarian militants who operate under an umbrella group called Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The TTP aims to overthrow the government and replace it with a harsh brand of Islamic law.
Islamabad says TTP leaders have taken refuge in neighboring Afghanistan where they run camps to train Islamist militants to launch attacks inside Pakistan.
Kabul has previously said rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have soured in recent months. Islamabad says Kabul is not doing enough to tackle militant groups targeting Pakistan.
On Sunday, Pakistan said it had arrested 11 Islamist militants who were involved in a suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers, alleging the attack was planned by the TTP on Afghan soil, a charge Kabul has previously denied.
Earlier, a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a dam project in northwest Pakistan on March 26 this year, killing six people that was the third major attack on Chinese interests in the South Asian country in a week.
The first two attacks targeted a Pakistan naval air base and a strategic port used by China in the southwest province of Balochistan where Beijing is investing billions in infrastructure projects.
The engineers were en route from Islamabad to their camp at the dam construction site in Dasu in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, regional Police Chief Mohammad Ali Gandapur said.
“Five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed in the attack,” Gandapur told Reuters.
Dasu is the site of a major dam and the area has been attacked in the past. A blast on a bus killed 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, in 2021.
Since the beginning of this year dozens of Pak soldiers including officers and 87 armed activists belong with different militant groups have been lost their lives while neither all country’s LEA, all politicians and all governments are ready to accept that there is any existence of Taliban, Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, IS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram or any type of local, national or international terror organization in Pakistan and the same claims have been propagating, arguing and ‘declaring’ by the immigration authorities of the world since a long shamefully.
