Pakistan claims it killed 50 Afghan border forces

KABUL, Afghanistan — Pakistan claimed Sunday to have killed 50 Afghan border troops, wounded 100 and destroyed five of their posts in sporadic clashes since Friday near a major border crossing. Afghan officials called the high death toll “baseless” but said that several days of cross-border skirmishes had left two Afghan troops dead.

The fighting in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, and the conflicting accounts of what happened, highlighted the hair-trigger state of relations that persist between the two Muslimmajority countries, despite recent diplomatic overtures by Pakistan aimed at repairing ties strained by years of mistrust and finger-pointing over terrorist and insurgent activities in the region.

Pakistan claimed that Afghan border police had fired first, without provocation, at armed guards escorting Pakistani census teams in the border community of Chaman, killing nine people and injuring 40.

Afghan officials said the Pakistani team and its uniformed Frontier Corps guards had crossed into Afghan territory, but they did not provide a detailed account of the incidents.

A Pakistani Frontier Corps official, Maj. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad Anjum, told journalists at the border crossing that two Pakistani soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the fighting, which began Friday. He said Pakistan had fired in retaliation but was “not happy” over the Afghan casualties, “as they are our Muslim brothers.”