A terrorist was killed and a soldier martyred during an exchange of fire between militants and security forces in the Sambaza area of Balochistan’s Zhob district, the military’s media affairs wing said on Sunday.

According to a statement issued by Inter-Services Public Relations, the operation launched on the basis of “credible information”, was continuing for the last 96 hours.

The objective of the operation was to “deny terrorists the use of few suspected routes to move across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to sneak into KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) along the interprovincial boundary and target citizens and security forces.”

In the ensuing exchange of fire, a terrorist was killed while a soldier, Sepoy Haq Nawaz, was martyred.

Two soldiers were injured in the gunfight, the ISPR statement said.

It added that the terrorists were supported by their facilitators from across the border as well through firing and that the sanitisation operation continued in the area to apprehend the remaining perpetrators.