Pakistani airstrikes targeted multiple suspected Pakistani Taliban hideouts inside neighboring Afghanistan early on Monday, killing at least eight people and prompting return fire from the Afghan Taliban, officials said.
The latest escalation is likely to further raise tensions between Islamabad and Kabul. The Pakistani attacks came two days after insurgents killed seven soldiers in a suicide bombing and coordinated attack in northwest Pakistan.
The Afghan Taliban denounced the attacks as an assault on Afghanistan's territorial integrity and said they killed several women and children. The Defense Ministry in Kabul said later Monday that Afghan forces “attacked Pakistani military centers along the border with heavy weapons,” without providing details.
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The Pakistani attacks were carried out in the provinces of Khost and Paktika, which border Pakistan, according to two Pakistani security and intelligence officials. The officials did not provide further details and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Pakistan's military had no immediate comment and it was unclear how deep inside Afghanistan the Pakistani planes flew. The airstrikes were the first since 2022, when Pakistan attacked militant hideouts in Afghanistan, although Islamabad has never officially confirmed those attacks.
Afghan Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that Monday's airstrikes killed three women and three children in the Barmal district of Paktika province, while two other women were killed in an attack in the Khost province.
The Pakistani military carried out airstrikes against Pakistani Taliban hideouts in Afghanistan. They were the first airstrikes since 2022 and a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said there would be consequences. (Associated Press)
“Such attacks are a violation of Afghanistan's sovereignty and will have bad consequences,” Mujahid said.
The two Pakistani officials said mortars fired by the Afghan Taliban wounded four people and that some villagers in the northwestern district of Kurram were moving to safer areas on Monday night. Pakistani troops returned fire, officials said.
On Saturday, seven Pakistani soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber crashed his explosives-laden truck into a military post in the town of Mir Ali, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan. Troops responded and killed all six attackers in a shootout, the military said.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari attended the soldiers' funerals and vowed to retaliate, saying that “the blood of our martyred soldiers will not be in vain.”
The Mir Ali attack was claimed by a newly formed militant group, Jaish-e-Fursan-e-Muhammad, but Pakistani security officials believed it was primarily composed of members of the Pakistani Taliban, the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. or TTP, which often targets Pakistani soldiers and police.
Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security expert, said an army lieutenant colonel and a captain were among those killed in Mir Ali and that Monday's airstrikes were an obvious retaliation, coming 24 hours after the warning. by Zardari.
“Pakistan's patience for the Afghan interim government's continued hospitality towards terrorists carrying out frequent attacks against Pakistan from inside Afghanistan has finally run out,” Ali said.
Separately, the Pakistani military said security forces carried out an operation on Monday in North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan, killing eight militants linked to Saturday's attack, but made no mention of the airstrikes. inside Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as US and NATO troops were in the final stages of their withdrawal after 20 years of war. The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan emboldened the TTP, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban insists that it does not allow the Pakistani Taliban – or any other militant group – to use Afghan soil to launch attacks. However, the TTP has stepped up attacks inside Pakistan in recent years, straining relations between Kabul and Islamabad.
Adding to tensions between the two countries was a move by Islamabad last year to expel Afghans living in Pakistan without valid documents. Pakistan has long hosted some 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled during the Soviet occupation of their country between 1979 and 1989. More than half a million people fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took power.
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So far, Pakistan has expelled nearly half a million Afghans in the current crackdown. Islamabad says Afghans who have refugee status have not been deported.
The deportations have also drawn criticism from the international community, with analysts warning that mass deportations risk radicalizing those who have been forced to leave Pakistan, often returning to deplorable conditions in Afghanistan.
In January, Pakistani strikes – in a tit-for-tat exchange with Tehran – hit Pakistani militants inside Iran, briefly raising tensions between the two neighbors. The situation calmed down after Tehran and Islamabad agreed to mutually cooperate against each other's militants.
