Security forces killed seven militants, including a suspected suicide bomber, in an overnight intelligence-based operation in Balochistan's Nushki district, the army's media wing said on Saturday.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said troops acted on the night of July 30-31 after intelligence pointed to armed men holed up in the area. A hideout was located, kept under watch and then stormed, killing all seven, the statement said. A stock of ammunition and improvised explosive devices was destroyed at the scene.

The ISPR described those killed as members of "Fitna al Hindustan," the term the military uses for Baloch separatist groups among them the Baloch Liberation Army, which has claimed a string of major attacks in the province over the past two years. The military casts the group as an Indian proxy; India has repeatedly denied backing militancy in Pakistan.

None of this could be independently verified. Journalists and independent monitors have little access to conflict zones in Balochistan, and figures on who is killed in such operations and how almost always come from the military alone.

Sanitisation operations were still under way, the ISPR said, adding that the campaign under the army's Azm-e-Istehkam vision, approved by the federal Apex Committee under the National Action Plan, would continue against foreign-backed militancy.

The announcement caps a violent stretch in Balochistan. Security forces reported killing eight militants in the same district only days earlier, part of a broader surge in operations following coordinated insurgent assaults across several districts in early July that left dozens of soldiers and civilians dead.

Baloch nationalist parties and rights groups have long disputed the military's account of such raids and pressed for independent verification of the dead calls that, amid the access restrictions, have gone largely unanswered.

Published in Balochistan Dispatch, August 2nd , 2026