KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – At least nine Pakistani police officers were killed and five others injured when armed assailants attacked a checkpoint in Ziarat district of Balochistan province on Monday, local media reported.
Geo News, citing police officials, reported that the attackers stormed a police post in the Mangi area of Ziarat district. Authorities said that the militants took five other police personnel with them.
Pakistani security forces launched a clearance operation in the area following the assault and killed 15 terrorists affiliated with Fitna al-Khawarij, the term Islamabad uses for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the report said.
Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind said operations against terrorists would continue across the province. “There will be no safe haven for terrorists in Balochistan, and every attack will receive a decisive response,” he said.
The attack prompted widespread protests in Ziarat, where local tribes, transporters and relatives of the slain officers demonstrated at Ziarat Cross and other locations, blocking key national highways linking Balochistan with Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, police said.
Pakistan has experienced a surge in militant attacks in recent years, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces bordering Afghanistan, with security forces and government installations frequently targeted by groups including the TTP and Baloch separatists.
On May 24, at least 14 people, including three Frontier Corps personnel, were killed in a blast near a railway track in Quetta, the provincial capital.
Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of allowing TTP militants to use Afghan soil as a base for cross-border attacks, a charge Kabul denies. Relations between the two sides have deteriorated sharply, with repeated border clashes and Pakistani airstrikes in many provinces, including Kabul and Kandahar.
The UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has documented dozens of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, including women and children, from such strikes since October last year.
Multiple rounds of mediation, including talks facilitated by China and other regional powers, have failed to ease tensions. Pakistan is reportedly seeking verifiable action against TTP leadership, including guarantees to restrain or relocate the militants — conditions the Afghan Taliban have so far not accepted.
