Nearly 386 Pakistani security personnel — including 137 Army personnel and 208 policemen — have lost their lives during the first nine months of 2023 in the fight against terrorism, largely in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan, putting it on an eight-year high, media reported.
“With 1,087 violence-related fatalities recorded so far during the year, the outlaws suffered 368 (34 per cent), followed by civilians with 333 (31 per cent) fatalities,” says the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) report — Q3 2023.
The report noted that there was a consistent and alarming increase in the violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, The News reported.
Equally greater concern is the collective percentage of violence-related fatalities recorded in these two provinces which indicates a disturbing upward trend over the last five years; together, they suffered 72 per cent of all fatalities in 2019, and this unsettling figure surged to a staggering 92 per cent in the first nine months of 2023.
During the third quarter of 2023, nearly 445 people lost their lives and 440 were injured in 190 terror attacks and counter-terror operations, The News reported.
The report said that KP and Balochistan were the epicentre of the violence, accounting for nearly 94 per cent of fatalities and 89 per cent of attacks (including incidents of terrorism and security forces operations) recorded during this period.
The last quarter also recorded an alarming surge in violence by about 57 per cent, with the overall number of fatalities increasing from 284 in Q2 to 445 in Q3 of 2023.
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