Militants behead teenager in northwest Pakistan on spying charge

The Police official said that the beheaded body of a teenager was found in Bargai village, the Dawn newspaper reported. The report said the 19-year-old victim was killed by unidentified armed men believed to be militants on charges of spying.

The militant group 'Ittehadul Mujahideen-i-Khurasan' had left a dagger and a handwritten chit in the Pashto language along the body, carrying a message that Raheedullah was found guilty of spying for the army, Dawn reported.

An uncle of the slain boy told police that his nephew had gone to the fields on January 15 but did not return home.

This latest report comes amid rising militancy in the country. A total of 419 people were killed in Pakistan in 262 terrorist attacks in 2022, according to an Islamabad-based think-tank Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).

"Different nationalist insurgent, religiously inspired militant, and violent sectarian groups perpetrated a total of 262 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the year - including 14 suicide bombings - which marked an increase of 27 per cent from the year before," PIPS said in its annual report titled "Pakistan Security Report 2022".

"These terrorist attacks claimed in all 419 lives - an increase of 25 per cent from those killed in such attacks in 2021 - and injured another 734 people," the report added.

About half of the total fatalities or deaths caused by terrorist attacks in 2022 in Pakistan were concentrated among personnel of security forces and law enforcement agencies. Another 234 personnel of security and law enforcement agencies were also injured in the reported terrorist attacks.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), local Taliban groups such as Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), and other similar religiously inspired groups perpetrated a combined total of 179 terrorist attacks - compared to 128 in previous year - which killed 250 people and injured 262 others. (ANI)