Pakistani Taliban Boast of a Deadly and Productive 2015

The Pakistani Taliban bragged Monday that they have killed more than 680 people this year.

By Siobhán O'Grady

Pakistani Rangers carry the coffin of a colleague killed during an assault by militants on Karachi airport during funeral ceremonies in Karachi on June 9, 2014. Twenty-eight people were killed as Pakistan's military fought an all-night battle with Taliban gunmen who besieged Karachi airport armed with rocket launchers and suicide vests, leaving a nascent peace process in tatters. Ten militants were among the dead, officials said, as Pakistan's biggest city witnessed a return of the kind of spectacular offensive waged before by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives since 2007. AFP PHOTO/Rizwan TABASSUM (Photo credit should read RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images)

December 28, 2015, 1:57 PM

The Pakistani Taliban may be an extremist insurgency that follows the Islamic calendar and won’t celebrate a new year on Jan. 1, but the group’s spokesman, Muhammad Khorasani, marked the end of the Gregorian calendar this week with a look back at his group’s bloodiest strikes of 2015.

In a Twitter post Monday, Khorasani published an infographic bragging that the group carried out 136 attacks this year. That count included 43 “targeted killing attacks” and 19 bombings, as well as 17 missile strikes, 12 ambushes, and five “self-sacrificial” attacks. Khorasani also named 10 “confronting attacks” but did not elaborate on how those differentiated from others.

All in all, the Pakistani Taliban — also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP — said they had killed more than 680 people and destroyed 47 vehicles and two helicopters this year.

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Although their attacks don’t typically garner as much attention as the attacks carried out by the Afghan Taliban, it was the Pakistani militants that in 2012 attempted to assassinate schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who has since become a household name as a champion for girls’ rights to education. Last December, militants affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban massacred 148 people — mainly the children of Pakistani military personnel — at a school in Peshawar.

And as is evident from their self-congratulatory infographic published Monday, 2015 was another bloody year for the group.

On Jan. 30, more than 60 people were killed and 50 injured after a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban bombed a Shiite mosque in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

In March, another 15 people were killed and 70 injured after twin suicide attacks at two churches in Lahore.

And in September, the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 30 people in an attack on an air force base in northwestern Pakistan. An estimated 16 people were killed inside a mosque on the base, and at least 13 attackers were killed by the Pakistani military.

It’s unclear whether Khorasani’s graphic used those attacks as part of its bloody tally.

Photo credit: RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images; SITE Intelligence Group