The announcement by the State Department comes just days after Pakistan's Taliban movement, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, broke a months-long ceasefire with Pakistan and resumed attacks across the country

The United States has added four top Islamic militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan to its list of "global terrorists" in the midst of a regional resurgence of violence and border tensions. The militant leaders are from the Pakistani Taliban and an al-Qaida branch in South Asia.

Both militant groups are based in Afghanistan, but they also have bases in Pakistan's mountainous northwest and elsewhere. The announcement by the State Department comes just days after Pakistan's Taliban movement, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), broke a months-long ceasefire with Pakistan and resumed attacks across the country.

In response to militant threats, Pakistan's Interior Ministry increased security in public places and mosques on Friday. The TTP has directed its fighters to attack security forces throughout the country. The militant group was responsible for the 2014 attack on a Peshawar school, which killed 147 people, the majority of whom were schoolchildren.

The State Department stated that the militants' terrorist designation would result in sanctions against the four militant commanders from the TTP and al-South Qaida's Asian branch.

The US was targeting the "threat posed by terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including al-Qa'ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP)," according to the statement.

The US would take steps to prevent militants from using Afghanistan as a "platform for international terrorism," according to the statement.

As a result of these actions, all property and interests in property of those designated that are subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and all US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them, according to the statement.

According to the US, the sanctioned individuals include Osama Mehmood, the head of al-Qaida's South Asia branch, Yahya Ghouri, the deputy chief of the al-Qaida branch, and Muhammad Maruf, the group's recruitment coordinator.

It also named the TTP's leader, Qari Amjad, as the man in charge of militant attacks in northwest Pakistan.

The TTP issued a statement condemning the US measures and urging Washington not to meddle in the affairs of other countries. The group claimed it did not require the use of Afghan territory for attacks in Pakistan, where the TTP claimed tribal support.

The State Department's latest measures come just days after Gen. Asim Munir was named Pakistan's new army chief, amid a surge in militant attacks on the country's security forces.

One of the most difficult challenges Gen. Munir faces is determining how to respond to the threat posed by Pakistan's Taliban.

US CENTCOM chief Gen Erik Kurilla spoke with Gen Munir via video teleconference to congratulate him on his new position, according to a US Central Command spokesman.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan's government became a key ally of the US in its war on terror. Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaida, was killed in a US Navy SEALs operation in May 2011 in his hiding place in the garrison city of Abbottabad, near Pakistan's capital of Islamabad.

Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to the new US terrorism designations, but Islamabad has demanded that Afghanistan's Taliban rulers do more to keep militants out of their country. Pakistan made the demand in response to a deadly suicide bombing claimed by the TTP earlier this week. In Pakistan's southwest, police were attacked while protecting health workers distributing polio vaccines.

The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who have ruled their country since the US and NATO troops withdrew last year. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan emboldened their Pakistani allies, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in the next-door country.