Pakistan Military downs 8 militants to end year seeing 1,000 killed in terrorist attacks

Three terrorists attempting to infiltrate the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district, the military’s media affairs wing said on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, the Inter-Services Public Relations said five terrorists were killed in an intelligence-based operation in the general Mashkai area of Balochistan’s Awaran district.

Militant attacks across Pakistan killed around 500 civilians and a similar number of security forces in 2023, the highest number of fatalities the country has experienced in six years, according to a new report released Sunday.

Northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Baluchistan provinces bordering Afghanistan accounted for most of the terror attacks and the resulting casualties, the report by the Islamabad-based independent Center for Research and Security Studies, or CRSS, said.

Anti-state groups, such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, or TJP, separate Baloch insurgents, and a regional affiliate of Islamic State, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, often claim or are blamed for the violence.

According to a report published by Dawn on New Year’s Day, in 2023, Pakistan witnessed 1,524 violence-related fatalities and 1,463 injuries from 789 terror attacks and counter-terror operations.