Pakistan reported Thursday that one soldier and 12 insurgents were killed in intense predawn clashes in a volatile northwestern district bordering Afghanistan.
A military statement said the deadly shootout in North Waziristan occurred after security forces conducted an “intelligence-based” raid against a “khawarij” hideout, a term officially used to describe militants affiliated with the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
Insurgent attacks targeting security forces and government functionaries occur nearly daily in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, including the Waziristan region. The violence has killed hundreds of people in recent months, with TTP claiming responsibility for most of the attacks.
Pakistan maintains that the TTP, recognized as a global terrorist group by the United Nations, conducts attacks from its sanctuaries in Afghanistan, allegedly with the backing of the Taliban authorities in that country.
“We have been emphasizing to Kabul authorities to address the question of sanctuaries on the Afghan territory,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shafqat Khan told a weekly news conference in Islamabad earlier Thursday. The violence caused by the TTP is a “core problem” that is straining relations between the two countries, he said.
Khan also confirmed that Islamabad had returned to Kabul on Wednesday the remains of an Afghan combatant killed in a counterterrorism operation against TTP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earlier this week. The slain man was identified as the son of the deputy Taliban governor of Badghis, a northwestern province of Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, China joined Pakistan in renewing a call Thursday for the Taliban to uphold their counterterrorism pledges and prevent militants from using Afghan territory as a sanctuary. The statement was part of a joint declaration issued after a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, in Beijing.
“They called on the [Taliban] government to take visible and verifiable actions to dismantle and eliminate all terrorist groups based in Afghanistan, which continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global security,” the statement said.
Taliban officials did not immediately respond to the allegations. They have previously denied the presence of foreign militants on Afghan soil, asserting that no one is allowed to threaten neighboring countries from their territory.
