At least 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a pre-dawn airstrike by the Pakistan Air Force on a village in the Tirah Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local officials and media reports confirmed on Monday. The attack, which occurred around 2 a.m. without prior warning, involved JF-17 Thunder fighter jets—co-produced by Pakistan and China—dropping eight Chinese-made LS-6 laser-guided precision bombs on Matre Dara village. Rescue teams continued sifting through rubble from five destroyed homes, with fears the death toll could rise as more bodies are recovered.
The military justified the operation as targeting a bomb-making facility run by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commanders Aman Gul and Masood Khan, who allegedly used civilians as human shields and stored explosives in nearby mosques. However, no official confirmation of militant casualties has been issued, and the strikes have ignited widespread condemnation for endangering non-combatants.
The incident has fuelled fury among Pashtun communities in the restive northwest, where terror attacks have surged since the Afghan Taliban's 2021 return to power in Kabul, which Pakistan accuses of harbouring TTP fighters. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the main opposition party led by imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan, decried the bombing on X as sowing "seeds of hatred", with its Khyber chapter sharing graphic images of child victims and stating, "No words can encompass this sorrow and grief." Last week, thousands protested in Mingora, Swat Valley, demanding the Shehbaz Sharif government restore security.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) demanded an impartial inquiry, calling the deaths "deeply shocking" and a potential war crime. Amnesty International, which criticised a June drone strike killing a child, reiterated concerns over the "alarming disregard for civilian life". PTI lawmaker Abdul Ghani Afridi labelled it an "open crime against humanity", urging global attention akin to Gaza.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, often abbreviated as KP and encompassing the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) merged in 2018, spans rugged mountains along the 2,600-km Durand Line border with Afghanistan. Home to over 35 million mostly Pashtun residents, its capital, Peshawar, lies near the historic Khyber Pass, a gateway for ancient invasions and modern smuggling. The terrain—arid valleys and steep peaks—has long sheltered militants, a legacy of the 1979 Soviet-Afghan War, when U.S.-backed mujahideen, armed via Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), left behind weapons caches and battle-hardened fighters. Post-2001, after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban, groups like TTP coalesced in the late 2000s, launching attacks that killed thousands.
Provincial data shows 605 terror incidents from January to August 2025, claiming 138 civilian and 79 police lives. Recent influxes of banned outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen, fleeing India's Operation Sindoor—which neutralised nine camps in Pakistan and PoK after the Pahalgam attack—have exacerbated instability, with some analysts suspecting staged incidents to deflect blame.
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Monday's strikes followed a TTP ambush in South Waziristan that killed 12 soldiers and injured four, which the group claimed on social media. Similar tragedies abound: In March, 10 civilians died in a Katlang anti-terror raid, and a secondary blast at a TTP compound in Tirah killed 24 last month. Critics question intelligence quality, with locals alleging faulty intel masks broader failures. Kabul denies TTP sanctuaries, accusing Pakistan of cross-border incursions.
As Islamabad intensifies operations under U.S. pressure to curb militancy, the cycle of retaliation persists, leaving KP a volatile flashpoint where state control remains elusive.
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