Pakistan said Sunday it killed 54 militants, who were trying to infiltrate its northwestern province along the Afghan border as it also grappled with an escalating standoff with its eastern neighbor India over massacres of tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.
Pakistan has for years been fighting a banned militant outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and says the militants operate out of Afghanistan. The weekend clash marked the deadliest border incident since Pakistan stepped up its counterterrorism campaign.
On Pakistan’s Eastern border, tensions flared up on April 22 after militants gunned down 26 Indian tourists in Pahalgam are of the Indian-administered Kashmir, a source of water and strategic location for both nuclear-armed countries in the Himalayan mountains.
India has alleged a Pakistani link to the Pahalgam attack but shared no evidence. Islamabad has rejected the allegation and said if India stops flow of its share of water from Kashmir, it would be considered an act of war. The two countries have traded fire along the line of control, the de factor border, in Kashmir. Both control parts of Kashmir with each claiming that the entire region belongs to them.
The weekend killings of militants took place in North Waziristan, close to the Afghan border.
Pakistan military calls the TTP militants “Khawarij,” meaning extremists who exit the mainstream community. The military also calls them as Fitna al Khwarij, trouble-instigating militants.
A statement by army’s media wing said Pakistani troops effectively engaged and thwarted the militants’ attempt to infiltrate. “As a result of precise and skillful engagement, all fifty four Khawarij have been sent to hell,” the Inter-Services Public Relations said.
The forces also recovered a large cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives from the killed militants.
The statement said, “intelligence reports indicate that this group of Khawarij was specifically infiltrating on behest of their “foreign masters” to undertake high profile terrorist activities inside Pakistan.”
“Such actions by Fitna al Khwarij (FAK), at a time when India is leveling baseless accusations against Pakistan, clearly implies on whose cues FAK is operating. Such actions amount to treason and betrayal against the state and its citizens.”
The ISPR, referring to the National Security Committee’s recent statement underscored that distracting Pakistan’s security forces from their focus on the war against terror seems to be India’s strategic intent so that the FAK gets a breathing space in the face of Pakistani actions.
“The security forces demonstrated exceptional professionalism, vigilance and preparedness and prevented a potential catastrophe.”
Recent attacks against security forces in the KP province have deeply damaged Pakistani-Afghanistan relations as Islamabad has accused the Afghan Taliban government of not stopping the use of its soil against Pakistan.
