KHAR, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani security forces have launched a “targeted operation” against militants in a restive northwestern district bordering Afghanistan, displacing tens of thousands of residents who 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.
On Tuesday, the provincial government in the northwest said it will give 50,000 rupees ($175) in compensation to each displaced family in Bajaur, where volunteers from the Al-Khidmat Foundation, a charity, were also seen distributing food among displaced families.
Among those displaced is Gul Wali, 50, who said it was the second time that he had been forced to flee his home, as he sat in a government shelter, “although we have been told we will return to our village soon.”
Wali said most homes in his village in the Mamund district were destroyed during the previous military offensive in 2009. “We do not know what will happen to our homes this time,” he said.
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.
However, no information was available about any casualties among troops or insurgents.
The 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. Pakistan claimed victory in 2010, when displaced people were allowed to return to homes.
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Associated Press writers Rasool Dawar and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.