Military says two soldiers, militant leader killed in operation in Pakistan’s northwest

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s security forces lost two soldiers while carrying out an intelligence-based operation in the country’s northwestern Buner district on Saturday, during which a high-value militant target was killed and two of his accomplices were injured.
Pakistan has witnessed an uptick in militant violence for well over a year after the banned militant network, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), called off a fragile ceasefire with the government in November 2022.
Since then, there has been a resurgence of deadly suicide bombings targeting security forces, political rallies and Chinese workers, primarily in the western provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which are situated adjacent to Afghanistan.
“On 13 April 2024, security forces conducted an intelligence based operation in Buner District, on reported presence of terrorists,” the military’s media wing, ISPR, announced in a statement.
“During the conduct of operation, after an intense fire exchange, HVT [high-value target] Terrorist ring leader Saleem [alias] Rabbani was [killed], while two other terrorists were injured,” it added.
The ISPR said the targeted militant was involved in several militant activities against the security forces as well as extortion and target killings of civilians.
It continued that he was wanted by the law enforcement agencies and the government had fixed a bounty of Rs5 million on him.
“During the operation, two brave sons of soil, Lance Havildar Mudassar Mehmood (age-36 yrs; resident of district Rawalpindi) and Lance Naik Haseeb Javed (age-27 yrs; resident of district Poonch, AJ&K), having fought gallantly, embraced Shahadat [martyrdom],” the ISPR said.
The statement informed the security forces were carrying out sanitization operation in the area to eliminate any other militants found in the area.