ISLAMABAD: Police in Pakistan’s Punjab province have arrested 89 suspected militants in hundreds of intelligence-based operations across the province over the past three months, they said on Monday, amid a surge in militancy in the South Asian country.
Pakistan is currently battling an insurgency led by religiously motivated groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, which borders Punjab. The attacks in KP this year forced Punjab authorities to heighten security in the region.
The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police conducted 940 raids and arrested 28 militants from Lahore and Rawalpindi, seven each from Faisalabad and Bahawalpur, 12 from Jhang and Sargodha, five from Sahiwal, four from Gujranwala and six from Gujrat and Bahawalnagar districts.
“Among the arrested militants were 55 linked to Fitna Al-Khawarij [Pakistani Taliban], five to Daesh, two to Al-Qaeda, two to Hizb ul-Tahrir and two to Jiye Sindh,” the Punjab CTD said in a statement.
“In the last three months, 13,521 combing operations were carried out during which 1,131 suspects were arrested.”
It said officials seized explosives, detonators, safety fuses, propaganda pamphlets, cash, primacord and other materials from the suspects, who were “planning attacks at various locations” to spread fear and panic among public.
The statement came hours after at least 24 people, including militants and civilians, were killed when a suspected bomb-making facility exploded on Monday at a compound used by Pakistani Taliban fighters in KP’s Tirah valley, according to media reports.
Fifteen people were killed this month in a suicide bombing claimed by the Daesh group at a political rally in the provincial capital Quetta.
According to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), Pakistan is the world’s second-most affected country by militant violence, with deaths rising 45 percent to 1,081 in 2024.
The 12th annual GTI report, published by Australia-based think tank Institute for Economics and Peace, ranked 163 countries in 2024, covering 99.7 percent of the world’s population and analyzing the impact of militant activities worldwide. Pakistan is second only to West African country Burkina Faso on the list.
Pakistan has struggled to contain a surge in militancy in KP since a fragile truce between the Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad broke down in Nov. 2022. The country faces another decades-long insurgency by Baloch separatists in its southwestern Balochistan province.
Islamabad has frequently accused Afghanistan of allowing the use of its soil and India of backing militant groups for attacks against Pakistan. Kabul and New Delhi deny the allegation.
