Pakistan says it killed 54 militants trying to enter from Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s military said Sunday that it had killed 54 militants trying to infiltrate the country from Afghanistan, highlighting the challenges its forces face on multiple fronts as tensions with India also rise rapidly.

The operation against the fighters from Afghanistan took place Friday and Saturday nights in North Waziristan, a remote district along Pakistan’s northwestern border, its military said.

Pakistani troops detected the movement of the large group of militants and killed all of them, the military said, adding that it had seized a cache of weapons and explosives.

The 54 deaths reported were an unusually high number in Pakistan’s battle against instability along its border with Afghanistan during the nearly four years since the United States withdrew its military support from the country and the Taliban took power.

The banned group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, has intensified attacks on Pakistani security forces, straining ties between Pakistan’s leaders and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of harboring and supporting TTP fighters, an allegation that the Taliban deny.

The Pakistani government is also contending with an increasingly lethal insurgency among Baluch separatists in the country’s southwest. And on the eastern front, Pakistani forces have been placed on alert as India appears to be moving toward military strikes inside the country after a deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir last week.

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