Terrorism Incidents Drop By 64 Percent In NW Pakistan During Q1 Of 2015

Terrorist incidents in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KPK) province have dropped by 64 percent during the first quarter of the year compared to the same period of last year, official report said Friday.
According to data compiled by the Strategy and Analysis Wing of provincial home department, the province witnessed a considerable improvement in terrorism and general crime situation from January to March 2015.
The province which was once one of the most-hit areas of the terrorists in the country have seen a drop in target killings by 47 percent, robberies by 3 percent, kidnapping for ransom by 41 percent and car snatching by 12 percent.
It claimed that extortion cases had come down by a whopping 77 percent.
Mapping the real situation, it notes that 293 terrorism incidents took place during the first quarter of 2014, while the number dropped to 107 during the current year.
Similarly, targeted killings dropped to 24 from 45, robberies to 32 from 33, kidnapping cases from 54 to 32, car snatching to 14 from 16, extortion to 13 from 81, the report says.
The number of suicide attacks has come down by 83 percent, roadside bombings dropped by 79 percent, mortar attacks by 80 percent, firing by 25 percent and hand grenade attacks by 66 percent.
However, the ratio of murders remained the same for the period under review of both the years.
Also, significant improvement was noted in case of civilian and law enforcement agencies' casualties that have dropped by 81 and 77 percent, respectively.
Civilian casualties dropped from 544 to 103 during the period under review.
The report, however, said that the number of light arms' attacks and targeted killings is on the rise, while IEDs, suicide attacks and hand grenade incidents have shown downward trend.
KPK shares its boundary with the restive tribal areas which are home to local and foreign terrorist.
Due to its geographical closeness to the lawless areas, KPK was an easy target of insurgents to carryout target attacks, but such incidents witnessed a remarkable drops since after the launch of Pakistani army's armed offensive "Operation Zarb-e-Azb" in North Waziristan tribal area.
Started in June 2014, the operation has so far killed over 2763 terrorists and destroyed their 837 hide outs, the Inter-Services Public Relations, Pakistan Army's media wing, said on June 15, 2015 upon the completion of one year of the operation.
A total of 347 officers and soldiers of Pakistani army were also killed in the operation which has now reportedly entered its last phase.
Similarly in another operation in Khyber Agency, a tribal area which lies next to KPK in northwest Pakistan, army broke the back- bone of the terrorists and their facilitators who were believed to be involved in target killings, kidnapping for ransom, terrorist attack and extortion in the province.
Launched in October last year, the operation has so far killed over 200 militants. (Cihan/Xinhua)