Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan kill at least 8
KABUL, Afghanistan — Pakistan launched two airstrikes into Afghanistan on Monday morning that killed at least eight people, Afghan officials said, escalating simmering tensions between the two countries.
The pre- dawn strikes were carried out in the Paktika and Khost Provinces in eastern Afghanistan around 3 a.m., Afghan officials said. Three children were among those killed, according to Taliban officials, who condemned the strikes as a violation of Afghan territory.
The strikes came amid a surge of attacks by militants in Pakistan following the Taliban’s seizure of power in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have blamed militants harbored on Afghan soil and protected by the Taliban administration for the attacks. Taliban officials have denied those claims.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban administration, said in a statement on X that his country “has a long experience of freedom struggle against the superpowers of the world” and “does not allow anyone to invade its territory.”
“Such incidents can have very bad consequences which will be out of Pakistan’s control,” he added.
The Pakistani action came two days after militants attacked a military post in northwestern Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. In a statement released Monday evening, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the country had carried out “intelligence-based antiterrorist operations” inside Afghanistan and accused the Taliban administration of aiding militants operating in Pakistan.
Over the past two years, the statement said, the Pakistani government has “repeatedly urged the Afghan authorities to take concrete and effective action to ensure that the Afghan soil is not used as a staging ground for terrorism against Pakistan.”
“However, certain elements among those in power in Afghanistan are actively patronizing TTP and using them as a proxy against Pakistan,” it added, referring to the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
The strikes and statement appeared to signal that Pakistan’s newly elected government would take a tough stance with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan over the militant violence that has roared back in Pakistan in recent years. That violence has shattered a relatively calm period since the country’s military carried out a large-scale military operation in 2014 and forced militants across the border into Afghanistan.
After the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021, the pace of attacks by militants surged in Pakistan, with the assaults themselves becoming bolder. In 2023, the number of attacks by militant groups in Pakistan rose by nearly 20% compared with the previous year, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The violence has raised fears of a wider conflict breaking out along the historically contested border, known as the Durand Line, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has also fueled growing tensions between the Pakistani authorities and Taliban officials, who deny offering support to militant groups operating in Pakistan, including their ally, the Pakistani Taliban.
Pakistani officials have repeatedly asked the Taliban administration in Afghanistan to rein in the militants. In response, the Taliban authorities have suggested that Pakistan address the militants’ demands and have offered to mediate talks.