ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s security forces on Monday killed a militant in an operation the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, the Pakistani military said.
The intelligence-based operation was conducted in Dera Ismail Khan district, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing.
“The killed terrorist remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities against the law enforcement agencies as well as target killings of innocent civilians,” the ISPR said in a statement.
A sanitization operation was being conducted to neutralize any other threats in the area, it added.
Pakistan’s northwestern and southwestern regions that border Afghanistan have witnessed a surge in militancy in the last more than a year. The attacks particularly increased in the run-up to Feb. 8 national elections.
At least five policemen were killed in a bomb blast and firing on a patrol in the Kulachi area of the same district on the election day.
The attacks initially spiked after the Pakistani Taliban called off their fragile, months-long truce with the government in Islamabad in Nov. 2022.
The subsequent rise in militancy last year prompted Islamabad to order all illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, to leave the country.
