A map of Pakistan. (AP)
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani security forces in 2024 suffered the highest casualties in nearly a decade while battling insurgency, an Islamabad-based research group said.
The Center for Research and Security Studies said in its report Tuesday that this year was the deadliest for Pakistani security forces in 9 years.
“On average, nearly seven lives were lost daily,” according to the report which tallied “at least 685 fatalities and 444 terror attacks.”
The data was released as militants mounted separate attacks on Tuesday on a security post, a government office and a police van in the country’s restive northwest, which borders Afghanistan, killing a policeman, and two civilians, including a child.
An officer was also wounded in the first attack at the Draban Post in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Abdullah Khan said, adding that the civilian was an employee of the Customs department.
A child was killed in the second attack when a roadside bomb went off outside a government office in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a police official Hayat Khan said. Also Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a police vehicle in the northwestern Bannu district, wounding seven people, police said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, who often target security forces across the country, especially in the former tribal regions in the troubled northwest bordering Afghanistan.
The Center for Research and Security Studies said its latest report was based on data collected from open sources, mainly media outlets. In Pakistan, the military doesn’t regularly confirm causalities among troops.
“Equally alarming were the cumulative losses of civilians and security personnel, i.e. 1612 fatalities, accounting for over 63% of the total recorded this year and marking 73% more losses compared to 934 outlaws eliminated,” it said.
Abdullah Khan, the managing director of the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, released a report on Tuesday documenting the deteriorating law and order situation, saying “Pakistan witnessed a 40% surge in militant attacks in 2024 compared to 2023.”
He said officers killed 950 militants this year, while 527 security forces and 489 civilians died in militant attacks.
There was no immediate comment from the military on either report.
Last week, military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif told a news conference that 925 insurgents were killed in 2024, a record high compared to the past five years, while 383 soldiers were killed in such operations. He also said Pakistani security forces this year conducted 59,775 operations against insurgents in the country.
Pakistan in recent months has stepped up intelligence-based operations against the Pakistani Taliban, emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. The TTP is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Rasool Dawar in Peshawar and Ishtiaq Mahsid in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report
