Gunmen killed nine Pakistani police officers, and others are missing, after an attack on a checkpost at a dam project in restive Balochistan province, officials said on Tuesday.
“Nine policemen are dead, and many are missing after an attack on a checkpost that was guarding the Mangi Dam project,” Abdul Qudoos, a senior district official, told AFP.
A spokesman for the provincial government confirmed the toll, saying senior officers from several police stations were among the dead and blaming the attack on Islamist militants.
Paramilitary, police, and counter-terrorism personnel had “successfully carried out the joint clearance operations” against the militants, Balochistan’s government spokesman Shahid Rind said in a statement.
Pakistan has for years been battling a separatist insurgency in Balochistan, where militants target state forces and foreign investment and infrastructure projects in the mineral-rich province bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
That is part of intensifying militant attacks in Pakistan’s border regions, which Islamabad says emanate from Afghanistan — where authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement.
Earlier in the last week of June, Pakistan launched its deadliest attack on Afghanistan, with Islamabad saying it obliterated dozens of militants. The nighttime strikes are the latest flare-up of violence between the neighbors whose relationship has been fraught since 2021, when the Taliban government took power in Kabul, and follow a weeks-long war that erupted in February.
Pakistan’s information minister said air and ground operations killed 29 militants and were aimed at a group that it blames for a deadly weekend assault in Karachi, although Afghan authorities have repeatedly denied that their territory harbors attackers.
The Taliban government said the airstrikes hit three eastern provinces, killing 36 civilians and wounding 163.
A resident of Paktia province, Adam Khan, said he “cannot put into words the condition of the children I saw at the hospital, or the screams of their parents and siblings”. Those killed in one of the strikes “were innocent civilians, including children, elderly people and women” sleeping in a house, the 63-year-old told AFP.
The Pakistani operation along the border is the deadliest since March, when an attack on a drug treatment center in Kabul killed hundreds, according to the United Nations. Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the latest offensive targeted Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Hamdullah Fitrat, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman, said the Paktia site “was bombed for a second time” after residents rushed to rescue people.
In the countries’ capitals, the foreign ministries summoned each other’s diplomats over the attack in Afghanistan’s border area and earlier in Pakistan’s megacity Karachi.
In Paktia’s Tsamkani district, hundreds of mourners gathered before the funeral beds of some of those killed.
Mediation from several countries, including China, has failed to produce a lasting resolution between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Their war earlier this year killed hundreds of Afghans and displaced tens of thousands, according to the UN.
There have been sporadic attacks since a ceasefire was reached in March, with Pakistani strikes in June killing 13 people, Afghan officials said.
Islamabad is mediating between the United States and Iran to end their war in the Middle East, but Pakistan says its battle against militancy at home requires its strikes on Afghanistan.
Explosives were detonated, and gunmen opened fire inside a Rangers paramilitary camp in Karachi in one of the worst militant attacks in Pakistan’s most populous city in years. Authorities said three paramilitary personnel were killed and that they had detained an Afghan involved in the attack.
Pakistan says its forces use “precise targeting” to aim at militant hideouts and weapons stores, especially those of the TTP that has waged a violent campaign against Pakistan for years.
Afghan authorities have repeatedly denied that the country is used by militants and say Pakistani operations have caused a heavy civilian death toll.
The conflict earlier this year saw the two militaries engage in fierce fighting in border areas, along with unprecedented Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan cities, including the capital Kabul and southern Kandahar, where the Afghan Taliban’s supreme leader is based.
By Agence France-Presse
