Karachi: “Our words fail to express the depth of our grief. Instead, the dead bodies that protesters carried along the road are speaking for our grief. It is a village that has now been massacred,” said Sabiha Baloch, a central leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), in a recent video.

On August 12, the BYC and other Baloch activists alleged that Pakistan’s military forces had carried out airstrikes on Sorab (Surab) in Balochistan, killing more than 20 people and wounding an unknown number, including children. The Pakistani military has disputed this account. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) described the incident as a premature IED blast on the ground rather than an airstrike, claiming that “18 terrorists” and three civilians were killed. 

Curiously, a regime-friendly social media outlet acknowledged that there had been an airborne attack: “Security forces received credible intelligence that FAH terrorists had dumped a large quantity of explosives at a compound for preparing Vehicle-Borne IEDs. A swift quadcopter strike was carried out. The compound was completely destroyed…”

Two weeks on, the contradictory accounts of the Baloch groups and the Pakistani military have not yet been independently verified, amid internet and telecommunications disruptions in the area.

Balochistan is not the only region to have faced the brunt of military operations. More recently, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), once considered a government-friendly region, has also experienced state brutality and repression since late May 2026.

In Swat, attacks have reportedly continued from January through August this year. Whether in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Sindh, people are protesting across Pakistan, as political and social turmoil becomes........

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