Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry. Photo: File
Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry said on Wednesday that Pakistan had stepped up security and arrested dozens of suspects, fearing a growing wave of terrorist attacks following its airstrikes in Afghanistan.
“Our forces are on alert to fight any attack,” Chaudhry said, adding: “You know, the militants always react whenever we attack 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 wave of suicide attacks on Pakistani soil.
Islamabad blames Kabul for allowing fighters to use Afghanistan as a refuge. Kabul denies the accusations, saying militancy is an internal problem in Pakistan.
Pakistani and Afghan forces exchanged fire along their border on Tuesday, with each side accusing the other of instigating the clashes.
There have also been a number of terrorist attacks, including an ambush on a police vehicle in Kohat in which five police officers and two civilians were killed, as well as a suicide attack at a checkpoint that killed two police officers.
Chaudhry said the terrorists’ retaliation proved that Islamabad had links to Afghanistan, adding that forces had prevented several attacks in recent weeks and arrested a number of suspects, including Afghans.
Security forces accelerated search and intelligence operations and “arrested dozens of suspected militants, their handlers and their facilitators,” the minister said.
Several sources added that intelligence agencies have issued warnings about a possible increase in terrorist attacks in the coming days.
Urban centers, markets, security forces and places of worship could be possible targets, depending on the alerts, the sources said.
“In our official communications, we have received a strong warning of further terrorist attacks. 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 targets of terrorist attacks and “we fear that Afghanistan may retaliate against Pakistan through terrorist networks in Punjab and Sindh as well.”
Militancy is a growing problem in Pakistan, with the number of attacks increasing every year since 2022, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a global monitoring organization.
ACLED data shows that attacks in Pakistan have increased almost fourfold, from 658 in 2022 to 2,425 in 2025, and over the same period, TTP attacks increased sevenfold, from 118 to 838.
