Report: Terrorist Attacks Kill Nearly 1,000 Pakistanis in 2023 

FILE - Relatives and mourners attend the funeral prayer of victims who were killed in Sunday's suicide bomber attack in the Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, July 31, 2023.

Militant attacks across Pakistan killed around 500 civilians and a similar number of security forces in 2023, the highest number of fatalities the country has experienced in six years, according to a new report released Sunday. Northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Baluchistan provinces bordering Afghanistan accounted for most of the terror attacks and the resulting casualties, the report by the Islamabad-based independent Center for Research and Security Studies, or CRSS, said. It noted that 2023 was the deadliest year for Pakistani police and military forces in a decade, collectively losing more than 500 personnel in terrorist bombings and ambushes. Anti-state groups, such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan, or TJP, separate Baloch insurgents, and a regional affiliate of Islamic State, known as the Islamic State Khorasan, often claim or are blamed for the violence. The Pakistani military has reported the deaths of at least 265 officers and soldiers in nationwide militant attacks and counterinsurgency operations in 2023. In December, militants raided an army base in a northwestern district and killed at least 23 soldiers in the deadliest attack in the country’s recent history. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police said in its annual report this week that militant attacks claimed the lives of its 185 personnel. Police in Baluchistan also suffered fatalities, but provincial authorities have formally not released any details. Pakistan says TTP and other fugitive militants have increasingly and freely carried cross-border terrorist attacks from sanctuaries in Afghanistan since the Islamist Taliban seized power in the neighboring country in August 2021. Officials in Islamabad allege that Afghan fighters linked to the ruling Taliban in Kabul have also facilitated and participated in TTP-led assaults on Pakistani security forces and civilians.