Pakistani security forces have launched a “targeted operation” against militants in a restive northwestern district bordering Afghanistan, displacing tens of thousands of residents who have fled to safer areas, officials said Tuesday.
There was no formal announcement of the launch of the offensive in Bajaur, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but a government administrator, Saeed Ullah, said it was not a large-scale operation and only insurgent hideouts were being hit to avoid civilian casualties.
Another government administrator, Shahhid Ali, said the number of displaced people had rapidly increased to nearly 100,000.
Residents reported that security forces, backed by helicopters, struck militant hideouts in the mountainous areas along the Afghan border. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said the operation was ongoing.
Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, are a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuary in Afghanistan and have been living there openly since the Taliban takeover, and some have crossed the border back into Bajaur and carried out attacks.
Pakistan also carried out a major operation in Bajaur against Pakistani and foreign militants in 2009, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
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Associated Press writers Rasool Dawar and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
