Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry. Photo: File
Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry said on Wednesday that Pakistan has increased security and arrested dozens of suspects as it fears the rising wave of terrorist attacks following its airstrikes in Afghanistan.
“Our forces are on high alert to counter any attack,” Chaudhry said, adding: “You know the militants always respond when we go after their hideouts in Afghanistan.”
Pakistan carried out airstrikes on targets in Afghanistan over the weekend on what it said were terrorist targets responsible for a recent spate of suicide bombings on Pakistani soil.
Islamabad blames Kabul for allowing fighters to use Afghanistan as a safe haven. Kabul denies the accusations and says the militancy is Pakistan’s internal problem.
Pakistani and Afghan forces exchanged fire along their border on Tuesday, with each side accusing the other of initiating the clash.
There have also been a number of terrorist attacks, including the ambush of a police vehicle in Kohat that killed five officers and two civilians, and a suicide bombing at a checkpoint that killed two policemen.
Chaudhry said the terrorists’ retaliatory attack proved Islamabad’s case that they had links in Afghanistan, adding that forces had foiled several attacks in recent weeks and arrested a number of suspects, including Afghans.
Security forces have stepped up search and intelligence-based operations and “have arrested scores of suspected militants, their handlers and their facilitators”, the minister said.
Several sources added that intelligence agencies have issued warnings of a possible increase in terrorist attacks in the coming days.
City centers, markets, security forces and places of worship could be possible targets, according to the alerts, the sources said.
“We have received a strong warning of more terror attacks in our official communication. In this regard, we have almost doubled our search operations across Pakistan,” an intelligence official said.
Another intelligence official added that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan were already under terrorist attacks and “we fear that Afghanistan will also retaliate against Pakistan through terrorist networks in Punjab and Sindh.”
Militancy is a growing problem for Pakistan, with the number of attacks increasing every year since 2022, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a global monitoring organization.
Data from ACLED shows that attacks in Pakistan have almost quadrupled to 2,425 in 2025 from 658 in 2022, and in the same period TTP attacks have increased more than sevenfold to 838 from 118.
