Seven Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an attack in North Waziristan tribal region.
Militants ambushed a Pakistani military convoy in a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban near the Afghan border, triggering an intense shootout in which seven soldiers and four insurgents were killed, according to the military.
A statement from the military said the ambush took place on Thursday in North Waziristan, a district in the volatile northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The area is believed to be a stronghold of the Hafiz Gul Bahadar group of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), according to Radio Free Europe/Liberty Radio.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, a militant group that is separate from the Taliban who seized power in Afghanistan last August.
The latest violence comes as Pakistan's military said Thursday that 128 militants have been killed since January in the region bordering Afghanistan. The military acknowledged that nearly 100 soldiers have been killed in militant attacks during the same period.
There has been an uptick in attacks on security forces in recent months. Earlier this month, at least four Frontier Corps officials were martyred and 18 others injured in a suicide attack near a check post on Quetta's Mastung Road.
Last week, two Pakistan Army soldiers were martyred in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in North Waziristan. The ISPR had said that security forces were conducting a clearance operation in the district's Dosalli area when the IED exploded.
In August, three Levies personnel were martyred and as many injured when their vehicle hit a landmine in Balochistan's Ziarat district.
Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces have become hotbeds of terrorist attacks in recent years. The borders of these two provinces are adjacent to Afghanistan.
The fresh attack came hours after a Pakistani military spokesperson said there were no talks in progress with the TTP. Earlier, it was reported that a jirga assembly of influential tribal elders was negotiating with the TTP leadership hiding across the border in Afghanistan to agree on peace talks with the Pakistani authorities and an end to the violence.
As part of the ongoing negotiations, dozens of TTP prisoners have also been freed by the Pakistani authorities over the past two months. However, Major General Babar Iftikhar, a military spokesperson, told journalists on April 14 that there are no talks going on with the TTP.
India-US statement on Pakistan
Tellingly, the militants attack on Pakistan army convoy came hours after India and the US have called on Pakistan to take immediate, sustained, and irreversible actions to ensure that no territory under its control is used for terrorist attacks.
In a joint statement issued on the fourth India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin III welcomed the convening of the 18th Meeting of the India-US Joint Working Group on Counter-Terrorism and the 4th Session of the India-US Designations Dialogue in October 2021.
Expressing strong condemnation against the use of terrorist proxies and cross-border terrorism in all its forms, the ministers called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, and Pathankot attack, to be brought to justice.
They called for concerted action against all terrorist groups, including groups proscribed by the United Nations Security Council 1267 Sanctions Committee, such as al-Qa'ida, Islamic State (Deash), Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb ul Mujahideen.
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