Summary Attaullah Tarar said terrorists should not be called militants as Pakistan lodged a protest with Afghanistan over the Karachi attack.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Tuesday criticized what he called the growing practice of referring to terrorists as “militants,” stressing that such terminology misrepresents the nature of terrorist violence.
Referring to recent media coverage of the attack on a Pakistan Rangers facility in Karachi, Tarar said the incident was a clear act of terrorism in which innocent people lost their lives and the attackers should be identified accordingly.
He said terrorists must not be called by any other name, adding that terrorism has no caste, color, creed, or religion.
Meanwhile, Pakistan summoned the Afghan chargé d’affaires to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and lodged a strong protest over the recent terrorist attack on the Rangers facility in Karachi, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi confirmed.
Terrorists are terrorists, they have no caste, colour, creed or religion. There seems to be a trend of calling these terrorists, "militants" which is extremely unfortunate. In a latest news report, TRT World @trtworld is now using this term. The Karachi attack was a terrorist…
— Attaullah Tarar (@TararAttaullah) June 30, 2026
The move came after Saturday night’s attack on a Rangers headquarters in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar area, where three security personnel were martyred and four others were injured.
According to Inter-Services Public Relations, security forces responded swiftly, killing three attackers while arresting one suspect alive.
ISPR said the attackers were linked to the Indian-backed outfit Jamaatul Ahrar and identified the arrested suspect as an Afghan national.
Tahir Andrabi said Pakistan conveyed its concerns directly to the Afghan envoy in Islamabad, while Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ubaidur Rehman Nizamani, delivered a similar demarche to Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry in Kabul.
He said the diplomatic protest was based on evidence indicating the involvement of Afghan nationals, including the suspect captured during the Karachi operation, in the attack.
According to security sources, the arrested suspect, identified as Usman Ali, told investigators he entered Pakistan from Jalalabad around a week before the assault.
During initial interrogation, he allegedly admitted to being a member of Jamaatul Ahrar and said the group’s commander in Afghanistan was Ahrar Moulvi. Security officials further stated that he and his accomplices had received training in Afghanistan before carrying out the attack.
