ISLAMABAD – Pakistani security forces, supported by military aviation, have eliminated 75 insurgents during multi-day counterinsurgency operations targeting a banned separatist faction that carried out a string of lethal attacks on security personnel, law enforcement, and civilian populations in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, senior government officials confirmed Friday.
The official announcement came 24 hours after Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif traveled to Quetta, Balochistan’s provincial capital, to meet with families of the 42 people killed in the recent wave of attacks. During the visit, Sharif assured the grieving families that the lives lost would not be forgotten, pledging that all those responsible for the violence would face justice.
The surge of violence this week has sparked growing regional and international security concerns, as analysts warn that separatist groups once dismissed as small, fragmented factions are rapidly expanding their operational capacity and geographic reach across Balochistan.
According to official statements from the Balochistan provincial government, the joint counterinsurgency operations – which involve regular army units, the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, and local law enforcement – were launched late Monday, following a large-scale coordinated assault on a police outpost near Mangi Dam by dozens of fighters from the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a group outlawed by the Pakistani government. Mangi Dam is a critical infrastructure site that supplies drinking water to millions of residents in Quetta and surrounding neighboring districts.
Nine police officers and 15 attacking insurgents were killed in the initial opening assault on the outpost. During the attack, BLA fighters abducted 18 additional police officers, who were later found executed with blindfolds after the insurgents retreated into nearby mountainous terrain.
Pakistan has long alleged that both the BLA and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) maintain insurgent training and staging sanctuaries on Afghan territory, and receive material and political support from India. Both the Afghan government and Indian authorities have repeatedly denied these accusations.
In addition to launching the sweeping counterinsurgency operations, the Pakistani federal government has approved 11.1 million Pakistani rupees (approximately $39,000) in compensation for the immediate family of each police officer killed in last week’s attacks.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s geographically largest province by area, is also the country’s least densely populated region. It has faced a decades-long low-level separatist insurgency led by ethnic Baloch armed groups that demand greater political autonomy or full independence from Islamabad. The province also faces frequent attacks from the TTP, a militant faction separate from the Afghan Taliban but aligned with the group ideologically and operationally.