11 dead in drone strikes against Taliban in Pakistan

Eleven people were killed in drone strikes in northern Pakistan on Saturday, launched by the army against the Taliban, who had killed seven soldiers a day earlier, police told AFP.

Three drone strikes were carried out on Friday night in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity, targeting "Pakistani Taliban hideouts" in the region bordering Afghanistan, where violence has erupted in recent months.

"It was only this morning that we learned that two women and three children were among the victims," he said.

"In protest, local residents placed the bodies of the victims on the road", saying that they were "innocent civilians" killed in the strikes, he added.

Another police source said that "an investigation is underway to establish whether Taliban fighters were indeed present at the sites at the time of the attack".

"It is too early to say whether the places affected were civilian areas or whether they were sheltering Taliban," he added.

The Pakistani Taliban -- known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) -- announced in mid-March a "spring campaign" against security forces, threatening "ambushes, targeted attacks, suicide attacks and strikes".

The TTP has since claimed responsibility for around 100 attacks in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

In the same province, "armed Taliban" fighters hiding in a house shot and killed seven soldiers who were carrying out an operation against them, a police source said on Saturday.

During the shoot-out, which lasted several hours, the army deployed helicopter gunships, killing eight Taliban, while six other soldiers were wounded, according to the source.

Since January 1, more than 190 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed in violence carried out by armed groups fighting against the government both in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and in Baluchistan provinces, according to an AFP count.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a blast from a bomb planted by separatists on a motorbike also killed a soldier and a civilian further south in Balochistan, police officer Mohsin Ali told AFP.

The area was the scene of a spectacular attack last month when militants held hundreds of train passengers hostage and killed dozens of off-duty soldiers.

Attacks are reported every day in Pakistan's western regions bordering Afghanistan, where the army regularly says it is killing "terrorists" during sweep operations, without, however, curbing the violence.

Attacks have increased in Pakistan in particular since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Islamabad accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of failing to eliminate militants who take refuge on Afghan soil to prepare attacks against Pakistan.

The Taliban government denies these accusations and in return accuses Pakistan of harbouring "terrorist" cells on its soil, pointing the finger in particular at the regional branch of the Islamic State group, EI-K.

"Pakistan expects the Afghan government to assume its responsibilities", the army said at the beginning of March, reserving "the right to take the necessary measures to respond to these threats coming from across the border".

Last year was the deadliest year in almost a decade in Pakistan, with more than 1,600 people killed in attacks -- nearly half of them security forces personnel -- according to the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.