ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan army’s media wing said on Monday nine militants had been killed in two separate military operations in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, amid a surge of militancy in the region.

Islamabad blames an ongoing rise in militant attacks on its territory on neighboring Afghanistan, saying Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, leaders have taken refuge there and run camps to train insurgents to launch attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban rulers in Kabul say rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad and it does not allow militants to operate on its soil.

The TTP pledges allegiance to, and gets its name from, the Afghan Taliban, but is not directly a part of the group. Its stated aim is to impose Islamic religious law in Pakistan, as the Taliban have done in Afghanistan.

“An intelligence based operation was conducted in Tira in Khyber District, where seven terrorists … were sent to hell by the Security Forces,” the army’s media wing said. “The killed terrorists were actively involved in numerous terrorist activities in the area and were wanted by Law Enforcement Agencies. Weapons, ammunition and explosives were also recovered from the killed terrorists.”

In another operation conducted in Lakki Marwat district, the amry said troops “effectively engaged” and killed two militants. 

“Sanitization operations are being conducted to eliminate any terrorist found in the area as the Security Forces of Pakistan are determined to wipe out the menace of terrorism from the country,” the army said.

Pakistani forces were able to effectively dismantle the TTP and kill most of its top leadership in a string of military operations from 2014 onwards in the country’s tribal areas, driving most of the fighters across the border into Afghanistan, where Islamabad says they have regrouped. Kabul denies this.

Last month, the federal government announced it would launch a new counter-terrorism operation, Azm-e-Istehkam, but the campaign has so far been opposed by opposition parties.

QUETTA: A woman and her two children were killed in a land mine blast in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Monday, paramilitary officials said.

Balochistan has seen a decades-long insurgency against what separatists call the unfair exploitation of resources in the mineral-rich region. Most of the separatist groups operate independently, but some recent reports in local media have pointed to increasing cooperation between them and with the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the TTP. 

Pakistani security forces have been the main focus of sepratists and other militants in the province, but in recent years they have also targeted Chinese interests, given Beijing’s increasing economic footprint in the region.

“Family members of Mohammad Ali were coming back to their home on Monday morning when they stepped on a land mine outside their residence, killing a woman and two children aged five and two years old,” Levies sepoy Abdul Rasheed told Arab News, saying the incident took place in Gabeen village in Kech district of Balochistan. 

It was unclear who had laid down the land mine and when in a province where Baloch rebels frequently attack security officials, gas pipelines, electricity infrastructure and transport links.

“Government of Balochistan along with law enforcement agencies are taking concrete measures to wipe out terrorists and their facilitators,” Home Minister Mir Zia Langove said, “Human rights organizations working in Pakistan should raise their voice against the murders of women and children.”