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Pakistani police and military forces killed over 100 “Indian-backed terrorists” in counterterrorism operations across the southwestern province of Balochistan over the past 40-hours, according to government officials.
Islamabad says the operations were kickstarted a day after a coordinated suicide and gun attacks killed 33 people, mostly civilians. Authorities said the attacks left 18 civilians, including five women and three children, and 15 security personnel dead.
Provincial Chief Minister, Sarfraz Bugti, told reporters in Quetta that troops and police officers responded swiftly, killing at least 145 members of “Fitna al-Hindustan”, a phrase the government uses for the allegedly Indian-backed outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA.
Bugti noted that the number of militants killed over the past two days was the highest in decades.
“The bodies of these 145 killed terrorists are in our custody, and some of them are Afghan nationals,” he said. Bugti claimed that the ”Indian-backed terrorists” wanted to take hostages but failed to make it to the city centre.
Militant attacks erupted on Saturday in the resource-rich Pakistani region, where Islamabad is seeking to attract foreign investment in mining and minerals.
In September, 2025, a US metals company signed a $500 million (€421.8 million) investment agreement with Pakistan, just one month after Washington designated the BLA and its armed wing as a foreign terrorist organisation.
Residents described scenes of panic after a suicide bombing killed several police officers on Saturday. “(It) was a very scary day in the history of Quetta,” said Khan Muhammad, a local resident. “Armed men were roaming openly on the roads before security forces arrived.”
Bugti repeatedly accused India and Afghanistan of backing the assailants and said senior leaders of the BLA, which claimed responsibility for the latest attacks in Balochistan, were operating from Afghan territory. Both Kabul and New Delhi deny the allegations.
He said on Sunday Afghanistan’s Taliban had pledged under the 2020 Doha agreement not to allow Afghan soil to be used as a base for attacking other countries, but “unfortunately, the Afghan soil was still being used against Pakistan.”
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have persisted since early October when Pakistan carried out airstrikes on what it described as Pakistani-Taliban hideouts inside Afghanistan, killing dozens of alleged insurgents.
The BLA is banned in Pakistan and has carried out numerous attacks in recent years, often targeting security forces, Chinese interests and infrastructure projects, in what authorities described as attempts to isolate Pakistan from the global economy and hinder its trade and development.
Balochistan has long faced a separatist insurgency by ethnic groups seeking greater autonomy or independence from Pakistan’s central government.
Armed skirmishes and terrorist attacks in the regions have claimed the lives of hundreds of people over the last few years, and several counts of what the UN has described as “severe” violations of human rights.
Additional sources • AP
