At least 145 people killed in multiple attacks in southwestern Pakistan

Pakistani police and military forces have killed more than 100 “Indian-backed terrorists” in counterterrorism operations in the restive southwestern province of Balochistan over the past 40 hours, government officials said Sunday, a day after coordinated suicide and gun attacks killed 33 people, mostly civilians.

The raids began early Saturday in several locations in Balochistan and left 18 civilians, including five women and three children, and 15 security personnel dead, officials said.

Sarfraz Bugti, the provincial chief minister, told reporters in Quetta that troops and police officers responded quickly, killing 145 members of “Fitna al-Hindustan,” a phrase the government uses to refer to the illegal Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), supposedly backed by India. The number of militants killed in the last two days was the highest in decades, he claimed.

“The bodies of these 145 murdered terrorists are in our custody, and some of them are Afghan citizens,” he said. Bugti claimed that the “Indian-backed terrorists” wanted to take hostages but failed to reach the city centre.

He spoke alongside senior government official Hamza Shafqat, who often oversees such operations against insurgents in the province, and praised military, police and paramilitary forces for repelling the attacks.

Militant attacks broke out Saturday in a resource-rich region where Pakistan is seeking to attract foreign investment in mining and minerals. In September 2025, a US metals company signed a $500 million investment deal with Pakistan, a month after the US State Department designated the BLA and its armed wing as a foreign terrorist organization.

Residents described scenes of panic after a suicide bombing killed several police officers on Saturday.

“It was a very scary day in the history of Quetta,” said Khan Muhammad, a local resident. “Armed men were roaming openly on the roads before security forces arrived.”

Bugti repeatedly accused India and Afghanistan of backing the attackers and said senior leaders of the BLA, which claimed responsibility for the latest attacks in Balochistan, were operating from Afghan territory. Both Kabul and New Delhi deny the allegations.

He said on Sunday that Afghanistan’s Taliban had committed under the 2020 Doha agreement to not allow Afghan soil to be used as a base to attack other countries, but that “unfortunately, Afghan soil was still being used against Pakistan.”

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have persisted since early October, when Pakistan carried out airstrikes against what it described as Pakistani Taliban hideouts inside Afghanistan, killing dozens of suspected insurgents.

Bugti said militants stormed the house of a Baloch worker in Gwadar and killed five women and three children. He condemned the murders. He said the attackers had planned to take hostages after breaking into government offices in the high-security area of ​​Quetta, but were thwarted. “We were aware of their plans and our forces were prepared,” he said.

The BLA is banned in Pakistan and has carried out numerous attacks in recent years, often targeting security forces, Chinese interests and infrastructure projects.

Authorities say the group has operated with the support of the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP, a separate group, is allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.

Balochistan has long faced a separatist insurgency by ethnic Baloch groups seeking greater autonomy or independence from Pakistan’s central government. The BLA regularly attacks Pakistani security forces and has also attacked civilians, including Chinese nationals, among the thousands working on various projects in the province.