Army to launch Operation ‘Radd-ul- Fasaad’ all over Pakistan

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Army has announced to launch operation ‘Radd-ul- Fasaad’ against terrorists all over the country, said an ISPR press release here on Wednesday.

According to the press release, “the operation aims at indiscriminately eliminating residual/latent threat to terrorism, consolidating gains of operations made thus far and further ensuring security of borders. Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Navy, Civil Armed Forces (CAF) and other security/ law enforcing agencies (LEAs) will continue to actively participate / intimately support the efforts to eliminate the menace of terrorism from the country”.

The decision has been taken at a high-level security meeting in Lahore on Wednesday. Chief of the Army Staff  General Qamar Javed Bajwa chaired the meeting, attended by all Corps Commanders, Pb Province, DG PR Pb & int heads.

Troops and police have been on high alert in Pakistan after last week´s wave of attacks, including one in Lahore and another on a Sufi shrine in Sindh province, killed more than 100 people.

After the attacks, Islamabad launched a violent crackdown, with Pakistani forces saying they had killed dozens of "terrorists" and carried out strikes on militant hideouts along the border with Afghanistan.

Prior to last week´s attacks, Pakistani forces have been engaged in a series of offensives, mainly in the country´s troubled northwestern tribal region, in pursuit of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants.

Thursday´s devastating assault on the Sufi shrine was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group and came after a series of violent attacks, including a Taliban suicide bomb in Lahore on February 13 which killed 13 people and wounded dozens.