Pakistan using lethal force against civilians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: Report

Islamabad, April 14 Pakistani forces, while conducting counter-terrorism campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, have many times been accused of using lethal force in ways that have repeatedly killed several innocent civilians, including women and children, a report has revealed.

"International human-rights organizations and independent reporting point to airstrikes, drone attacks and ground operations that blur the line between lawful targetting of armed groups and unlawful, or at least reckless, attacks on civilians, especially in tribal districts such as North Waziristan and Khyber. The result is a climate in which Pashtun communities feel simultaneously trapped between militant violence and state firepower, while accountability for civilian deaths remains virtually absent," a report in Greece-based Directus mentioned.

In 2025, at least 30 people were killed, including women and children, when Pakistan Air Force JF‑17 fighter jets at around 2 am reportedly dropped eight LS‑6 precision‑guided bombs on the Matre Dara village in the Tirah Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in an overnight airstrike. Images and videos from the site showed bodies of young children and adults scattered among the rubble. According to local residents, no militants were present there at the time of the strike.

Human rights activists contended that even if Pakistan believed Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) fighters were nearby, the scale of harm caused to civilians indicated Islamabad's failure to apply the principles of distinction and proportionality required under international humanitarian law.

In 2025, Amnesty International condemned what it termed an "alarming disregard for civilian life" in drone strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that repeatedly killed civilians, including children, according to the report in Directus. The organisation documented several strikes in 2025 and mentioned that Pakistani authorities had acknowledged some civilian deaths but often blamed them on militant attacks or misrepresented the victims as combatants. The organisation had demanded transparent probe, public disclosure of targeting process and compensation for families of victims.

"Women, while less frequently the explicit focus of reporting, bear a heavy share of the toll, both as direct victims and as those left to shoulder the social and economic fallout after male relatives are killed. In Matre Dara, among the roughly 30 civilians killed, multiple reports and eyewitness accounts noted that women were among the dead when homes were bombed as families slept," the Directus report mentioned.

"In other cases, such as Pakistani bombing raids across the border in Afghanistan's Khost province after a suicide attack in Peshawar, at least one woman and nine children were killed when a family home was struck, highlighting how cross-border operations linked to KP's security dynamics can still inflict lethal harm on women and children from Pashtun communities. These incidents underscore that female casualties are not incidental anomalies but recurring outcomes of how force is applied in densely populated or rural residential areas," it added.

According to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police statistics, from January-August 2025, the province recorded 605 terror incidents, which claimed the lives of 138 civilians and 79 police personnel. These statistics do not separate deaths caused by militants from those attributable to state actions, however, they indicate the scale of lethal violence in which children and women are often caught.

As per the report, analysts argued that official statistics routinely undercount or obscure civilian casualties from state operations as deaths are not formally recorded or victims are mislabelled as militants in official documents.

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