On January 25, 2026, Security Forces (SFs) killed three terrorists during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Panjgur District of Balochistan. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), “On January 25 (Sunday), security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in Panjgur District of Balochistan, on [the] reported presence of terrorists belonging to Indian proxy, Fitna al Hindustan.” However, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed that 12 SFs personnel were killed and six others injured during clashes in the area.
On January 19, 2026, five terrorists were killed in an intelligence based operation (IBO) by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) in the Dasht area of Mastung District in Balochistan. According to a CTD spokesperson, around seven other terrorists managed to escape, taking advantage of darkness and the nearby mountainous terrain.
On January 17, 2026, Six Security Force (SF) personnel were killed and four sustained injuries, while two vehicles suffered severe damage, when Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) cadres ambushed a military convoy entering the Gomazi area of Tump tehsil (revenue unit) in Kech District.
On January 15, 2026, SFs killed 12 terrorists and thwarted an attempt to create a hostage situation in Kharan District, during multiple operations. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), “approximately fifteen to twenty Indian-sponsored terrorists of Fitna Al Hindustan carried out multiple terrorist activities in Kharan City, District Kharan… terrorists attacked [the] City Police Station, National Bank of Pakistan and Habib Bank Limited.” They also looted PKR 3.4 million from the banks.
On January 14, 2026, at least 12 SF personnel were killed when the cadres targeted a military pickup vehicle in a convoy near Ghulam Muhammad Bazaar in the Pirandar area of Awaran District. BLF claimed responsibility for the attack.
On January 14, 2026, eight SF personnel were killed when the BLF cadres ambushed a Frontier Corps (FC) convoy at Kowari, between Ormara and Pasni, in Pasni District. BLF claimed responsibility for the attack.
On January 9, 2026, six SF personnel were killed when BLF cadres ambushed an Army convoy on the main highway at Ornach Cross in Khuzdar District. A statement, issued by BLF ‘spokesperson’ Major Gwahram Baloch, claimed responsibility for the attack.
On January 3, 2026, seven SF personnel were killed while six sustained injuries, when BLF cadres ambushed a military convoy in the Koto-Kotori area of Jhao tehsil (revenue unit) in Awaran District.
On January 1, 2026, five SF personnel were killed while three sustained injuries, when BLF cadres ambushed a military convoy in the Bazdad Pump area of Awaran District.
In the first 25 days of the current year, Balochistan recorded at least 120 insurgency/terrorism-related fatalities, including 21 civilians, 71 SF personnel and 28 militants, according to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP). During the corresponding period of 2025, the province had recorded 80 fatalities, including five civilians, 35 SF personnel and 40 terrorists.
Overall fatalities in Balochistan in 2025 totalled 1,534 (347 civilians, 751 SF personnel and 436 militants) in 482 incidents of killing, as against 774 such fatalities (273 civilians, 315 SF personnel, and 186 terrorists) in 250 such incidents in 2024, registering an increase of 98.19 per cent. The number of deaths was the highest since the SATP database started documenting fatalities in Pakistan. Earlier, the highest fatalities in the province were recorded in 2013, at 975.
While SF fatalities in Balochistan reached 71 in first 25 days of current year, 2025 recorded the highest number of SF fatalities since the documentation of insurgency/terrorism-related violence in Pakistan in 2000. With 751 SF fatalities in 2025, the province saw a rise of 138 per cent over 2024, at 315 SF fatalities, the highest on record.
In terms of terrorist fatalities, the 2025 tally was also the highest, at 436, since the SATP database started documenting fatalities in Pakistan. The preceding high in the province was 302 in 2015. Civilian fatalities, however, remained below earlier record, but increased from 273 in 2024 to 347 in 2025, an increase of 27.10 per cent. Earlier, the highest civilian fatalities in the province were recorded in 2013, at 648.
Incidents of killing increased from 250 in 2024 to 482 in 2025, the highest on record. The earlier highest number of incidents of killing in the province was in 2012, with 447 incidents. The number of explosions and resultant fatalities increased from 203 and 279, respectively, in 2024, to 283 and 440, respectively, in 2025. Fatalities from explosion were the highest in 2025, at 440; an earlier peak was recorded in 2013, with 312 deaths. However, the maximum of 433 explosions was recorded in 2006.
Though the number of suicide attacks increased from six in 2024, to nine in 2025, the resultant fatalities decreased to 51 in 2025, from 65 in 2024. The worst suicide attack of 2025 was on the night of September 2, when a suicide bomber blew himself up near Shahwani Stadium in the Sariab area of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, shortly after the conclusion of a public meeting of the Balochistan National Party (BNP-Mengal) held to mark the death anniversary of the late Sardar Attaullah Mengal. The bomber detonated his explosives-laden jacket in the parking area as participants were leaving the meeting. At least 13 people were killed, while 35 sustained injuries.
Similarly, major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities) increased from 74 in 2024 to 167 in 2024, and the resultant fatalities from 539 to 1,066. Such major incidents have been on an ascending trend since 2020. There were 28 such incidents in 2019, which dropped to 20 in 2020, spiked to 40 in 2021, 52 in 2022 and 52 in 2023. The most lethal major incident of 2025 was on March 11, when Baloch insurgents hijacked the Jaffar Express, with over 400 passengers-on-board, after they blew up the railway track in the Dhadar area of Bolan District. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which took responsibility for the attack, according to varying media reports, freed around 80 passengers, mostly women and children, but held hundreds of other passengers, most of them Pakistani Army personnel, hostage. They were demanding that authorities release jailed militants. On March 12, the Army launched an operation to end the crisis. On March 14, the Army declared that the operation had ended with the killing of all 33 militants involved in the attack. It further disclosed that 26 hostages, including 18 SF personnel, three railway officials and five civilians, were killed by the terrorists before the start of the Army operation. Five Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers were also killed during the operation. The Army disclosed, further, that 354 hostages were rescued, including 37 injured passengers. However, BLA claimed that its cadres inflicted a “devastating and unforgettable defeat” on the Pakistani military, as it executed all 214 Pakistani military hostages taken during the seizure of the train.
The deteriorating security situation in Balochistan is at least partially the result of state-sponsored enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, which has contributed to a spiral of retaliatory attacks and violence by Baloch insurgents targeting SFs and state-backed armed militia ‘death squads’.
In this environment of chaos, Islamist terrorist groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State (including the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, IS-KP, and the Islamic State Pakistan Province, IS-PP) have also thrived, even joining the Baloch groups in specific operations. The major active Baloch insurgent groups include the Baloch National Army (BNA), Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), Balochistan Liberation Tigers (BLT) and United Baloch Army (UBA).
Quoting Government data, The Balochistan Post reported on December 23, 2025, that at least 248 civilians and 205 Security Forces (SFs) personnel were killed in attacks, bombings, and armed incidents across Balochistan during 2025, according to official figures, making the year one of the most violent in recent times. Government data indicated that a total of 432 armed incidents were recorded across Balochistan during the year, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, including civilians and SF personnel, as fear and uncertainty continued to grip the region. Balochistan authorities, however, maintained that large-scale counterinsurgency efforts remained underway throughout the year. According to claims by Balochistan Additional Chief Secretary Hamza Shafqaat on December 14, 2025, more than 78,000 intelligence-based operations were conducted across Balochistan in 2025. Officials said these operations resulted in the killing of 707 members of Baloch insurgent groups.
Meanwhile, on January 9, 2026, the Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS), an alliance of “pro-independence” armed groups, released its annual operations report for 2025, claiming it carried out 174 attacks across Balochistan during the year. According to the report, BRAS fighters killed 167 military and intelligence personnel and injured another 95 in these attacks. The group also claimed that 26 persons, including members of intelligence agencies, had been captured. The infographic report claimed that BRAS conducted 35 explosions, 14 raid operations and 35 cordon-and-search actions, while also targeting 15 infrastructure installations. It said 30 Government and military vehicles were destroyed and 51 weapons were seized. BRAS asserted that a significant development occurred in August 2025, when its fighters “took control of Zehri town in Khuzdar for more than one month,” during which SFs “were targeted with intensity”.
Meanwhile, other Baloch insurgent groups also released separate annual reports, claiming their ‘share’ in the on-going violence. BLF, one of the most prominent among Baloch groups, after BLA, emerged as the most active in 2025. On January 3, 2026, BLF released its annual operational report for the period January to December 2025, claiming to have carried out 581 armed actions across Balochistan. Meanwhile, on January 7, 2026, BLA released its annual operations report for 2025, claiming responsibility for 521 attacks across Balochistan, claiming that these resulted in the deaths of more than 1,060 SF personnel. Further, on January 3, 2026, the Baloch Republican Guards (BRG) claimed responsibility for 88 attacks carried out during 2025, including 13 targeting train services. In a statement released to the media, BRG stated that 22 security personnel were killed and 35 seriously injured in these operations.
While these claims conflict with official claims on operations and fatalities, it would be difficult to dismiss them as false. These groups are creating havoc in the security establishment and the administration. Former Chief Minister (CM) and ex-speaker Jan Muhammad Jamali noted, on September 28, 2025, that Government ministers and party leaders could no longer travel safely by road, as armed groups expand their dominance over the region’s highways. Jamali added that the security situation had deteriorated to the point where senior parliamentary figures, including himself, now avoided road journeys. Further, on December 24, religious scholar Maulana Manzoor Ahmed Mengal expressed serious concern over the prevailing situation in Balochistan, stating that the Government had effectively lost control over large parts of Balochistan, and that the Chief Minister of Balochistan was unable to travel even to Khuzdar without a helicopter, reflecting the deteriorating governance and security situation.
Apart from SFs, the state-backed local militia, the ‘death squads’, have been primary targets of Baloch insurgents. The elimination of ‘death squad’ members is retribution inflicted by Baloch insurgent groups for their involvement in the state’s systematic human rights abuses and extra-judicial killing of Baloch people. According to partial data compiled by SATP, during the first 23 days of 2026 (data till January 25, 2026), four ‘death squad’ members have been killed and one injured in two attacks. During the corresponding period of 2025, one such incident was reported in which one was killed and another sustained injuries. During the rest of 2025, 38 incidents of attacks on ‘death squad’ members, in which 46 members were killed and another 19 sustained injuries, were recorded. In 2024, 14 incidents of attacks on ‘death squad’ members, in which 27 members were killed while another eight sustained injuries, were recorded. In 2023, four ‘death squad’ members were killed in four incidents of attack. In 2022, 17 ‘death squad’ members were killed and another 10 injured in 13 incidents of attack. Five such incidents of attack were reported in 2021, resulting in four dead and eight injured.
The ‘death squads’, along with SFs, have been the main executors of “enforced disappearance” and unattributed extrajudicial killings in Balochistan. According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), Balochistan has around 7,000 missing persons. VBMP’s continuous sit-in outside the Quetta Press Club reached its 6,055th day on January 23, 2026. VBMP continues to record new cases, reporting at least 1,237 new disappearances during the 2025 calendar year alone. Other monitoring groups, such as the Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB), documented 1,455 cases of enforced disappearance in 2025, of which 1,443 victims were men and 12 were women. More than 1,052 persons remain missing, 317 were later released, 83 were reportedly killed in custody, and only three were transferred to jail through any formal legal process. Geographically, the crisis is widespread. Kech District recorded the highest number of cases (318), followed by Quetta (172), Gwadar (164), Awaran (140), Dera Bugti (114), and Panjgur (105). However, the Pakistan Government’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED) consistently reports much lower numbers. As of early 2026, official figures from the COIED claimed only 454 active cases of enforced disappearance in Balochistan.
Instead of dealing with the problem of ‘enforced disappearance’ and extrajudicial killings in the province, the Pakistan establishment has sought to solve the Baloch crisis with extreme repression, putting Baloch activists under the Fourth Schedule list of Pakistan’s ATA. The designation under the Fourth Schedule subjects them to intense state surveillance, severely restricts movement, and allows authorities to investigate and freeze financial assets. The first instance of putting Baloch activists on the Fourth Schedule list was in September 2024, when the names of approximately 300 individuals were nominated to the list, with at least 137 added from Quetta alone. By November 2025, an additional 64 political and social activists were added via a new notification from the Balochistan Home Department. Notifications issued by the Balochistan Home Department on October 2 and on October 16, added more than another 100 human rights activists from Khuzdar, Kech, Chagai and other districts across Balochistan.
On December 29, 2025, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) expressed “grave concern” over what it called a continued practice of arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances, including several recent cases involving Baloch women and girls. The Commission found that the cases came alongside a rise in disappearances in Balochistan involving women and minors, including disabled student and activist Mahjabeen Baloch and “at least six others” in November and December. HRCP emphasised that such actions violated constitutional guarantees and had caused “irreversible harm” to families waiting for information, concluding, “The state must ensure transparency, accountability for perpetrators and unconditional access to justice.”
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a prominent human rights movement established to protest state-sponsored human rights abuses in Balochistan, released a report on January 13, 2026, highlighting the pattern of enforced disappearances of Baloch women and girls across the province during 2025, noting the use of collective punishment and gender-based human rights violations. Titled “Enforced Disappearances of Baloch Women in 2025: Collective Punishment and Gender-Based Human Rights Violations in Balochistan,” the report disclosed that at least 12 women and girls were forcibly disappeared across different districts of the Balochistan over the course of the year.
As cases of state sponsored “enforced disappearance” and extrajudicial killings in the province have been rising, not only do SFs and ‘death squads’ face retribution, but non-locals and non-Baloch people also face the wrath of the Baloch insurgents, from time to time. The Baloch tend to view non-locals as Army collaborators and part of a systematic effort to deny work and benefits to the Baloch population. Baloch insurgent groups such as BLA, BLF and BRA, among others, began to voice anti-outsider, particularly anti-Punjabi, sentiments in their campaigns in the wake of the military action against and killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, leader of the Bugti tribe and President of the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), in a military operation in the Chalgri area of the Bhamboor Hills of Dera Bugti District, on August 26, 2006. According to partial data compiled by SATP, a total of 274 ‘non-locals’ have been killed in Balochistan since August 26, 2006, (data till January 25, 2026). Of these, 218 were Punjabis. The other non-natives who fell to the ethnic collateral damage included 37 Sindhis. The ethnic identity of 19 remains unspecified.
The ‘outsiders’, many of who are engaged on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, are also collateral to the resentment against CPEC projects in the province. Since the inception of CPEC-related projects in 2013, people associated with these have been targeted, as have outsiders in general, as the BLA and other Baloch groups remain convinced that the native Baloch people have been deprived of their land and opportunities, despite the abundant natural resources of the province, even as little benefit from the CPEC project has flowed to the locals. A May 16, 2024, Federal Interior Ministry report noted 62 deaths in eight attacks on CPEC workers between 2020 and 2024, with incidents in Balochistan, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On December 10, 2024, the National Counter Terrorism Authority reported 20 Chinese and eight Pakistani deaths, with 34 Chinese and 25 Pakistanis injured, in 14 attacks since 2021.
According to partial data compiled from open-source reports by SATP, since July 19, 2007, at least 17 attacks directly targeting Chinese nationals have been recorded in Pakistan (12 in Balochistan, three in Sindh and two in KP), resulting in 87 deaths (data till January 25, 2026). The dead included 19 Chinese nationals, 13 Pakistani SF personnel, 42 Pakistani civilians and 13 attackers. Another, 66 persons, including six Chinese nationals, were injured in these attacks. Of two attacks reported in KP, one was claimed by TTP. One attack on a Chinese national in Karachi involved the Sindhi nationalist group, the Sindh Revolutionary Army (SRA).
Though, there was no attack on Chinese workers or projects associated with CPEC in 2025, on February 24, 2025, eight people, including six SF personnel, were injured in a bomb attack on a convoy of trucks guarding the copper project in the Mangochar area of Kalat District. According to an unnamed official, a convoy of 29 trucks transporting blaster copper from the Saindak Project, operated by the Metallurgical Corporation of China under a lease, to Karachi, was targeted on the Quetta-Karachi National Highway at Mangochar. Officials stated that no Chinese nationals were traveling in the convoy.
From time to time Baloch insurgent groups has been issuing threats to foreign countries coming to Balochistan for investment. On March 2, 2025, BRAS announced a restructured military strategy, unifying its forces to intensify operations against Pakistan and China in Balochistan. On August 26, 2025, while renewing its appeal for international support, BLF strongly condemned the US for entering into new agreements with Pakistan for the mining of Balochistan’s mineral wealth. According to Major Gwahram Baloch, the ‘spokesperson’ of BLF, Washington’s decision was “a grave injustice,” contradicting its claims of being a global champion of democracy and human rights. He warned, “Balochistan will become a quagmire for anyone who partners with Pakistan in the plunder of our resources. China is already a failed example.”
On December 17, 2025, BLF chief, Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch, warned China, Western countries and Middle Eastern states against investing in Balochistan, declaring that the recent attack in Nokkundi should be seen as a “clear national message” that foreign projects operating under Pakistan’s “forced occupation” will not be accepted. Earlier, on December 4, BLF claimed that its cadres killed 76 military personnel and several foreign employees during an attack on FC’s Brigade Headquarters in the Nokundi area of Chagai District.
While the Baloch people in general and insurgents in particular has been resisting years of neglect and injustice by the Pakistani states, the Pakistan Government has failed to address legitimate Baloch grievances and has relied on heavy-handed counter-insurgency operations and widespread repression that has fed enduring insurgency in the province. With a progressive hardening of positions on both sides, the security situation in the province can only worsen day by day.
