The overall level of violence picked up drastically across Pakistan during the current week. Meanwhile, unrelenting wave of ethno-political violence in the largest metropolis, Karachi, continued to wreak havoc and pile up misery. During two weeks, almost 70 persons were assassinated in the city. Meanwhile, the wave of bomb blasts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and armed clashes between militants and the security forces in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the recovery of mutilated dead bodies-continued to mount death toll. The data collected throughten newspapers that CRSS uses as the source, depicts that as many as 151 persons perished, as a result of 51 incidents of violence across the country during the reported week (for detailssee data sheet).The violent incidents also left 112 people injured.

Like the preceding week, yet again, the civilians turned out to be the major victims of the persistent wave of violence across Pakistan during the week, wherein civilians were accounted for 60 percent of the total death toll. In total 92 civilians were killed and 110 others wounded as a result of violent clashes across Pakistan. The second highest number of deaths was ofmilitants, wherein 58 militants were killed under different circumstances. Furthermore, like the previous week no CIA operated drone strikewas reported in any part of the country during the course of the week. In continuation of their campaign to demolish state infrastructure, militants, however, blew up four state-run schools in different areas of KP and FATA.

No sectarian attack was reported in any part of the country during the week. The number of deaths due to target killing incidents further dropped by three percent, (28 percent against last week 31 percent) during the current week. Overall, 57 percent of the total violent attacks wereoftarget killingin nature.The trend also underscores that the target killing insistently remains the preferred weapon in the hands of violent actors to exhibit violence (seethe pie chart below).

Furthermore, data underlines that of the total 29 incidents of target killings, a staggering 86 percent took place in Karachi alone, leaving 28 people dead (65 percent of the total dead in target killings) and injuring 13 others. Death toll of the militants in the ongoing military operations in KP and FATA region surged by 13 percent, wherein militant casualties due to military operation were accounted for 38 percent of the total loss of lives against last week 25 percent. Meanwhile, just one security personnel was killed during the week.

Also, 28 dead bodies, including 18 dead bodies of the Taliban, were recovered from different areas of Sindh, KP, FATA and Balochistan. Six dead bodies out of the total were found in Karachi. In sum, the number of violent incidents increased substantially-from last week 42 to 51 during this week, and thus the consequent casualties surged sharply from 90 to 151 during the current week.

A trail through weekly data and violent trends across the country suggests that the wave of violence, with slight variations, continues to blow apart the security landscape in Pakistan. All familiar shades of violence, like ethno-political, sectarian, nationalist-separatist and religio-terrorism are currently, ripping apart Pakistan. Meanwhile, the government looks contended with the current level of violence and that is why, does not bother to intervene and initiate political solutions to the conflicts which are primarily political in nature. Thus there are ample chances that with this horrific level of violence and miserably apathetic government response; security situation in Pakistan will get worse in coming weeks.

Sources

1. The News
2. Dawn
3. The Express Tribune
4. Pakistan Today
5. Daily Times
6. The Frontier Post
7. Jang (Urdu)
8. Daily Mashriq (Urdu)
9. Aaj (Urdu)
10. The Nation