ISLAMABAD: Pakistan witnessed a 28 percent rise in militant attacks in 2022 as compared to the previous year, which killed hundreds, unsettled the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government, and strained Islamabad’s with neighbouring Afghanistan, according to a report.
The report, released by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), noted militants carried out 376 attacks last year, in which 533 people were killed and 832 others were injured.
The attacks during the year 2022 are also the highest number of attacks in Pakistan during the last five years, said the report, adding it is for the first time since 2017 the country faced over 300 such attacks in a year and endured over 500 deaths for the first time after 2018.
The last month of 2022 witnessed 44 percent of the overall attacks that the country faced last year. The attacks increased by 88 percent in Balochistan and 54 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in December.
In December, the terrorists conducted 49 attacks and killed 56 people, including 32 personnel from security forces.
In response to the attacks, security forces conducted 16 operations in December and killed 39 militants, and arrested 47 others, added the report.
Afghanistan-based Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the proscribed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed most of the attacks, which had placed serious challenges before the government as well as the military.
In September 2017, Reuters reported that the military had decided to deradicalise armed groups and try to get them involved in politics.
That strategy was criticised by civil society groups and the government of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after the emergence of a new party purportedly linked to Hafiz Saeed, the chief of the Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD) group.
— With Reuters
