A senior official reported that Pakistan’s military successfully repelled an incursion from Afghanistan, carried out by “hundreds” of militants belonging to the Pakistan Taliban, on Wednesday, September 6. In response to the attack, additional troops were swiftly deployed to the challenging and rugged frontier region.
Pakistan troops repelled a cross-border raid from Afghanistan by “hundreds” of Pakistan Taliban militants on Wednesday, a senior official said, with extra forces rushed to the rugged frontier region.
Pakistan’s home-grown Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) movement has been emboldened by the return to power of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021, and Islamabad regularly accuses its neighbor of harboring militants, a charge they deny.
In a statement, the Pakistan military’s public relations wing said “a large group of terrorists equipped with latest weapons” attacked two outposts in the area.
The Pakistan Taliban share a common hardline Islamist ideology with their Afghan counterparts.
Police official Karim Khan told press agencies that security forces had sealed entry to Chitral, a rugged area of steep hills and valleys popular with domestic tourists.
Another official said troops and paramilitary forces had been rushed in to reinforce the district.
At the height of their power, the TTP held sway over swathes of mountain communities, enforcing austere Islamic law, and patrolling land just 140 kilometres north of the capital.
But the Pakistani military came down hard after 2014 when TTP militants raided a school for children of army personnel and killed nearly 150 people, most of them pupils.
Its fighters were largely routed into neighboring Afghanistan, but now Islamabad claims the TTP are using Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a foothold to stage assaults across the border.
Over the first 12 months of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, Pakistan witnessed a 50 percent surge in militant attacks, focussed in the western border provinces according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).
Khalil Wakim, with AFP
