QUETTA, Pakistan — Pakistani police and military forces killed over a 100 “Indian-backed terrorists ” in counterterrorism operations across the restive southwestern province of Balochistan over the past 40 hours, government officials said on Sunday, a day after coordinated suicide and gun attacks killed 33 people, mostly civilians.

The raids began early Saturday at multiple locations across Balochistan, and left 18 civilians, including five women and three children, and 15 security personnel dead, authorities said.

Sarfraz Bugti, the provincial chief minister, told reporters in Quetta that troops and police officers responded swiftly, killing 145 members of “ Fitna al-Hindustan,” a phrase the government uses for the allegedly Indian-backed outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA. The number of militants killed over the past two days was the highest in decades, he said.

“The bodies of these 145 killed terrorists are in our custody, and some of them are Afghan nationals,” he said. Bugti claimed that the ”Indian-backed terrorists” wanted to take hostages but failed to make it to the city center.

He spoke alongside senior government official Hamza Shafqat, who often oversees such operations against insurgents in the province, and praised the military, police and paramilitary forces for repelling the assaults.

Militant attacks erupted on Saturday in a resource-rich region where Pakistan is seeking to attract foreign investment in mining and minerals. In September 2025, a U.S. metals company signed a $500 million investment agreement with Pakistan, a month after the U.S. State Department designated BLA and its armed wing as a foreign terrorist organization.

Residents described scenes of panic after a suicide bombing killed several police officers on Saturday.

“(It) was a very scary day in the history of Quetta,” said Khan Muhammad, a local resident. “Armed men were roaming openly on the roads before security forces arrived.”

Bugti repeatedly accused India and Afghanistan of backing the assailants and said senior leaders of the BLA, which claimed responsibility for the latest attacks in Balochistan, were operating from Afghan territory. Both Kabul and New Delhi deny the allegations.

He said on Sunday Afghanistan’s Taliban had pledged under the 2020 Doha agreement not to allow Afghan soil to be used as a base for attacking other countries, but “unfortunately, the Afghan soil was still being used against Pakistan.”

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have persisted since early October when Pakistan carried out airstrikes on what it described as Pakistani Taliban hideouts inside Afghanistan, killing dozens of alleged insurgents.

Bugti said militants stormed the home of a Baloch laborer in Gwadar and killed five women and three children. He condemned the killings. He said the attackers had planned to seize hostages after storming government offices in Quetta’s high-security zone but were thwarted. “We were aware of their plans, and our forces were prepared,” he said.

The BLA is banned in Pakistan and has carried out numerous attacks in recent years, often targeting security forces, Chinese interests and infrastructure projects.

Authorities say the group has operated with support from the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP, a separate group, is allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021.

Balochistan has long faced a separatist insurgency by ethnic Baloch groups seeking greater autonomy or independence from Pakistan’s central government. The BLA regularly targets Pakistani security forces and has also attacked civilians, including Chinese nationals among the thousands working on various projects in the province.

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Ahmed reported from Islamabad.

Iran’s supreme leader warned that any attack on the country by the United States would spark a “regional war” in the Middle East, following President Trump’s threats to intervene militarily in response to the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on recent nationwide protests.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments, made while speaking to a crowd at his compound in Tehran and as quoted by the Tasnim news agency, are the most direct threat he’s made so far since the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group arrived in international waters off Iran, in the Persian Gulf. 

Mr. Trump has also mentioned his desire to curb Iran’s nuclear program in his recent remarks, but it remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will use force. He has repeatedly said Iran wants to negotiate. 

U.S. regional allies, including Turkey and Qatar, are hastily working to arrange a diplomatic offramp to avert U.S. military action in Iran. A potential meeting in Turkey this week is being planned, although a senior U.S. official tells CBS that it is unclear whether the U.S. will participate and who would attend the meeting with the Iranians.

He had said he wanted to continue negotiations last year before then deciding to strike Iran’s nuclear sites last June, supporting Israel’s 12-day war with the country. On Saturday, Mr. Trump declined to say whether he’d decided on what he wanted to do regarding Iran now.

In Tehran, Khamenei claimed that the U.S. is interested in the country’s oil, natural gas and other mineral resources. He said the Americans wanted to “seize this country, just as they controlled it before.”

“The Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war,” he said.

The supreme leader added that: “We are not the instigators, we are not going to be unfair to anyone, we don’t plan to attack any country. But if anyone shows greed and wants to attack or harass, the Iranian nation will deal a heavy blow to them.”

Speaking to reporters upon his arrival at the wedding of Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff, and Erin Elmore, the director of art in embassies at the U.S. Department of State, at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, Mr. Trump reacted to Khamenei’s comments, saying: “Of course he is going to say that.”

“We have the biggest, most powerful ships in the world over there, very close couple of days, and hopefully we’ll make a deal. We don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right,” Mr. Trump said.

Khamenei also hardened his position on the recent demonstrations after earlier acknowledging some protesters had had legitimate economic grievances. The demonstrations began Dec. 28, initially over the collapse of Iran’s rial currency. It soon grew into a direct challenge to Khamenei’s rule.

“The recent sedition was similar to a coup,” he said. “Of course, the coup was suppressed. Their goal was to destroy sensitive and effective centers involved in running the country, and for this reason they attacked the police, government centers, (Revolutionary Guard) facilities, banks and mosques — and burned copies of the Quran. They targeted centers that run the country.”

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which relies on a network of sources inside Iran to gather its information, says it has verified the deaths of 6,713 people, most of them demonstrators, and that the authorities have detained at least 49,500 people so far. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll and arrest figures, given that authorities have cut Iran’s internet off from the rest of the world. Other sources have told CBS News and other media that the actual death toll across the country is substantially higher. 

As of Jan. 21, Iran’s government put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, labeling the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

Even this government figure exceeds the death toll reported from any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.

Iran has planned a live-fire military drill for Sunday and Monday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes. The U.S. military’s Central Command, which is the Pentagon’s regional combatant command for the Middle East, has warned against threatening American warships or aircraft during the drill or disrupting commercial traffic.