Suspected Pakistani Taliban hideouts hit
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani airstrikes targeted suspected hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban inside Afghanistan early on Monday, two days after insurgents killed several soldiers in a suicide bombing and coordinated attacks in the country’s northwest, two security officials said.
There was no immediate comment from Islamabad’s military, and Kabul’s Taliban government denounced the strikes, which are likely to further increase tension between the neighboring countries.
Two Pakistani security and intelligence officials said the airstrikes took place in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost and Paktika provinces, which border Pakistan. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.
The officials provided no further details, and it was unclear whether jets went deep inside Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban also confirmed Monday’s strikes in a statement.
The Afghan Taliban’s top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that Pakistan’s airstrikes in Paktika’s Barmal district killed three women and three children, while the attack in Khost left two women dead.
The strikes came two days after a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden truck into a military post in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Paktunkhwa province, killing seven soldiers.
Pakistani troops also came under attack on Saturday, and they killed all six militants responsible in a shootout in the province’s North Waziristan district.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari attended the funerals of the soldiers and vowed retaliation over their deaths, saying “the blood of our martyred soldiers will not go in vain.”
Saturday’s attack on the military post was claimed by a newly formed militant group, Jaish-e-Fursan-e-Muhammad. But Pakistani security officials believe the group is mainly composed of members of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which often targets Pakistani soldiers and police.
Syed Muhammad Ali, a security expert based in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, said Monday’s strikes were in retaliation for a series of TTP attacks, especially the one on Saturday in Mir Ali, in which an army lieutenant colonel and captain were among those killed.
He also said the strikes came within 24 hours of Zardari’s vengeance vow.
“It also indicates that Pakistan’s patience for the Afghan interim government’s continued hospitality for terrorists conducting frequent attacks on Pakistan from inside Afghanistan has finally run out,” he said.
The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but are allied with their Afghan counterparts, who retook Kabul in August 2021 as United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops were in the final stages of their pullout there. That takeover emboldened the TTP, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
Though Afghanistan’s Taliban government often says it will not allow TTP or any other militant group to attack Pakistan or any other country from its soil, the Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks inside Pakistan in recent years, straining relations between Islamabad and Kabul.