Pakistan’s deadliest year in a decade: 2025 violence up sharply, report says

Pakistan experienced its deadliest year in more than a decade in 2025, with combat-related deaths rising sharply from the previous year, according to a report released by an independent think tank.

The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, or PICSS, said violence in Pakistan left 3,413 people dead in 2025, up from 1,950 in 2024. PICSS said 2,138 militants were killed, with the militant death toll reflecting a 124% rise from 2024.

PICSS said the increase in militant deaths reflected intensive counterterrorism operations against the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The report said the group is not part of Afghanistan’s Taliban, and said the TTP has intensified attacks on Pakistan’s security forces in recent years.

Separately, a roadside bomb in Sibi, a district in Balochistan, killed a passerby on Thursday and wounded five others, according to police chief Ghulam Ali. No group claimed responsibility, but suspicion was expected to fall on separatists who have been blamed by the government for previous similar attacks.

PICSS managing director Abdullah Khan said the high death toll was driven in part by a rise in suicide bombings and by militants’ use of U.S. military equipment left behind after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Khan said those factors later reached the Pakistani Taliban and increased operational capabilities.

Khan said the 2025 fatalities also included 667 security personnel, a 26% increase from the previous year and “the highest annual figure since 2011,” and 580 civilian deaths, “the highest annual toll since 2015.” He also said PICSS recorded 28 deaths among members of pro-government peace committees.

PICSS said it recorded at least 1,066 militant attacks in 2025 and that suicide attacks rose 53%, with 26 incidents reported. It also said security forces arrested about 500 militants during intelligence-based operations last year, up from 272 in 2024, and that multiple militant groups, including the TTP, claimed most attacks in 2025.

The PICSS report came weeks after Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry, said security forces carried out 67,023 intelligence-based operations in 2025 and killed 1,873 militants, including 136 Afghan nationals.

The violence and blame-sharing unfolded alongside heightened tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan after border clashes that followed Oct. 9 explosions in Kabul. A Qatar-mediated ceasefire has largely held since then, but the sides failed to reach an agreement in November after three rounds of talks in Istanbul, and all border crossings have remained closed since October, halting bilateral trade and the movement of people.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said reopening the border crossings was linked to written assurances from Kabul that it would not allow its soil to be used for attacks in Pakistan. He also said Pakistan recently allowed the United Nations to deliver relief supplies to Afghanistan, but that trucks carrying aid were stranded on the Pakistani side because Afghanistan did not open the gates from its side.

“A country in need of humanitarian assistance is unwilling to receive it. This is unprecedented — a country facing a humanitarian crisis is blocking humanitarian supplies,” Andrabi told a news conference. He said there was no response from Kabul to that claim.

In December, Pakistan’s newly appointed armed forces chief Field Marshal Asim Munir called on Afghanistan’s Taliban government to choose between maintaining ties with Islamabad or supporting the Pakistani Taliban.