Army says raids killed 74 militants in KP and Balochistan
The military says 43 were killed in Mir Ali and Orakzai districts over 10 days, and 31 in Balochistan operations since Nov 3.
Pakistan's security forces killed 74 militants in raids on hideouts over the past 10 days, the military said on Friday, in operations spread across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
A military statement said raids in the Mir Ali and Orakzai districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed 43 militants. Troops seized weapons, ammunition and explosive devices in those operations, it said.
A separate series of operations in Balochistan killed 31 militants from Nov 3 onwards, the statement said. It described Balochistan as the scene of an insurgency led by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, and alleged that the militants were backed by Afghanistan and India. Kabul and New Delhi have denied such allegations in the past.
The military called the dead fighters Khawarij, a term the government uses for groups it says are supported from Afghanistan, including those linked to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Kabul denies the accusation.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif praised the security forces and said the fight against militancy would continue, according to the statement.
The TTP is a separate group from Afghanistan's Taliban but allied with it. The Afghan Taliban took Kabul in 2021, and many TTP leaders and fighters are believed to operate from sanctuaries across the border, which has strained relations between Islamabad and Kabul.
The statement did not name any of the 74 dead, give a district-by-district affiliation for them, or say whether any soldiers or civilians were hurt in the raids. It did not say how many people were arrested.
All the casualty figures came from the military, which issued the statement in Islamabad. No independent confirmation of the counts was available.
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