Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, April 7, 2025 - Pakistan’s military said security forces raided a militant hideout in the country’s northwest and killed nine insurgents, including a figure it described as a high-value militant behind the killing of an army captain last month.
The raid took place in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border. In its statement, the military identified the militant as Shireen and said he had been involved in the March killing of Capt. Hasnain Akhtar during a shootout in the region. The military said all nine dead were members of the group it called “Khwarij,” a term the government uses for the Pakistani Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have been blamed for a rise in attacks across Pakistan. The group is allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan and has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly said the militancy problem is tied to cross-border sanctuaries and has accused Kabul of doing too little to stop attacks launched from Afghan territory.
The latest strike came amid a wider pattern of operations in the northwest. Just a day earlier, the military said troops killed eight militants in North Waziristan as they attempted to cross from Afghanistan. That sequence underscored how frequently Pakistani forces are operating in the border belt, where militants, civilians and security personnel have all faced repeated violence.
Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, used public remarks on the same day to press Kabul to rein in the TTP. He warned that Afghanistan should work with Pakistan on combating terrorism. The message reflected a familiar diplomatic line in Islamabad: military action inside Pakistan continues, but officials want the Afghan Taliban-led government to take a more active role in denying armed groups room to operate across the frontier.
The military did not release details on the raid beyond the death toll and its account of Shireen’s role. It was also not immediately clear whether the operation had any wider impact on TTP command structures. Still, the statement signaled that Pakistan is continuing to pursue named militants it believes are tied to attacks on its own forces, even as violence across the northwest remains a persistent security challenge.
The operation also fit into a familiar exchange between Islamabad and Kabul. Pakistan has long argued that militant violence inside its borders is tied to safe havens or cross-border movement, while the Afghan Taliban-led government has denied allowing any group to use Afghan soil for attacks on another country. That disagreement has made every reported raid more than a local battlefield event; it is also a diplomatic message.
For the families of Pakistani soldiers, the immediate significance is narrower and more personal. The military linked Shireen to Capt. Hasnain Akhtar’s death and presented the raid as retaliation against an attacker it considered important. Even without more operational detail, the statement made clear that the army wants to show it can find and kill individuals it sees as responsible for earlier losses.
The military’s language also indicates it wants to shape public perception as much as battlefield outcomes. By labeling the dead militants as “Khwarij” and identifying one of them as Shireen, the statement connected the raid to Pakistan’s wider fight against the TTP and to the death of a senior officer. That framing turns a raid into a message about retaliation, deterrence and state control.
The location near the Afghan border is important because it keeps the cross-border issue alive in the background. The report did not say the militants had just crossed over, but the district’s geography made the operation part of the broader northwest security belt that Pakistan has struggled to stabilize for years.
