QUETTA, BALOCHISTAN: The Balochistan government has claimed that security forces killed more than 35 armed individuals and arrested three senior commanders of a banned organisation during an ongoing intelligence-based operation in the Mangla Zarghoon Ghar area of Quetta.
The claim was made by Balochistan Chief Minister’s Assistant for Political and Media Affairs Shahid Rind while speaking to the media.
According to Shahid Rind, the operation in the Mangla Zarghoon Ghar area was launched on May 13, 2026, and has since achieved what he described as significant successes against armed individuals in the region.
He stated that during the operation, more than 35 armed persons were killed while several of their hideouts and camps were completely destroyed.
Shahid Rind further claimed that three important commanders of the banned organisation were also arrested during the operation, from whom he said extremely valuable intelligence information has been obtained. He added that on the basis of this information, further targeted operations are ongoing and the net is being tightened around facilitators and supporters of the militants.
“The state of Pakistan will not rest until militancy is completely eradicated,” he said. “Those elements disturbing the peace of Balochistan and their facilitators will in every case be brought to their logical conclusion.”
As has been the pattern in the past, no evidence of the killings has so far been made available to local media. The identities of those killed, their organisational affiliations and the names of the arrested commanders have not been made public by the authorities.
It is also noteworthy that similar government claims in the past have been consistently rejected and challenged by the families of victims and human rights organisations, raising serious questions over the credibility and transparency of such announcements.
Families of victims have consistently alleged that their loved ones were taken away by Pakistani security forces, including Frontier Corps (FC) personnel and Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) officials. In several documented cases, family members have claimed to have witnessed the detentions firsthand, and in some instances even recorded video footage of their loved ones being taken away by uniformed personnel.
Pakistani forces have repeatedly denied these allegations, maintaining that they act within the bounds of law at all times. However, human rights organisations, civil society groups and public advocacy movements have continued to raise serious and persistent concerns over the issue, demanding full transparency and accountability from the state.
In a number of deeply troubling cases, individuals who had previously been reported as missing by their families were later found killed in what authorities described as armed encounters. However, families and human rights groups have frequently and strongly challenged these official accounts, alleging that many such incidents were in fact staged encounters deliberately carried out by CTD and other security forces to justify extrajudicial killings of missing persons.
The latest government announcement follows a well-established and recurring pattern in Balochistan, where official claims of large-scale militant casualties have consistently been met with scepticism by local journalists, families of the missing, and national and international human rights bodies.
In the absence of independent verification, disclosed identities of the deceased or publicly named arrested commanders, the government’s figures remain impossible to independently confirm or scrutinise at this stage.
The government’s announcement comes against the backdrop of a significant and visible surge in militant activity across Balochistan over the past week and beyond.
In recent days, Baloch armed groups have carried out a series of high-profile operations across the province, including taking control of several major highways and the city of Dalbandin, launching deadly attacks on security forces, targeting and setting ablaze heavy vehicles carrying minerals, arresting and killing company workers, setting fire to a police station in Dalbandin while releasing prisoners held there, and a series of IED and armed assaults on military posts across Kech and other districts.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) have both claimed responsibility for these operations.
The simultaneous government announcement of a major security success and the continuing wave of militant activity across the Balochistan present a sharply contrasting and deeply troubling picture of the ground situation in Balochistan.
