Islamabad said it carried out strikes along the border with Afghanistan early Sunday, targeting what it called hideouts of Pakistani militants it blamed for recent attacks inside Pakistan. The Afghan Red Crescent Society said greater than a dozen people were killed.
Pakistan didn’t specify the locations targeted, however the Afghan defense ministry said in a press release “various civilian areas” within the provinces of Nangarhar and Paktika in eastern Afghanistan were hit, including a spiritual madrassa and multiple civilian homes.
The statement called the strikes a violation of Afghanistan’s airspace and sovereignty.
Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid earlier on X said the attacks “killed and wounded dozens, including women and kids.”
Mawlawi Fazl Rahman Fayyaz, the provincial director of the Afghan Red Crescent Society in Nangarhar province, said 18 people were killed and several other others wounded.
Clearing rubble and burying the dead
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul and handed him a note of protest over Pakistani strikes. In a press release, the ministry said protecting Afghanistan’s territory is the Islamic Emirate’s “Sharia responsibility” and warned that Pakistan can be answerable for the implications of such attacks.
On Sunday, villagers were seen clearing rubble in Nangarhar following airstrikes, while mourners were preparing for funerals of those killed. Habib Ullah, an area tribal elder, said those killed within the strikes weren’t militants. “They were poor individuals who suffered greatly. Those killed were neither Taliban, nor military personnel, nor members of the previous government. They lived easy village lives,” he told The Associated Press.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X that the military conducted “intelligence-based, selective operations” against seven camps belonging to the Pakistani Taliban, also often called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and its affiliates. He said an affiliate of the Islamic State group was also targeted.
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Tarar said Pakistan “has all the time strived to keep up peace and stability within the region,” but added that the protection and security of Pakistani residents remained a top priority.
Pakistan blames Afghans for suicide bombings
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan in recent times, much of it blamed on the TTP and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Islamabad accuses the TTP of operating from inside Afghanistan, a charge each the group and Kabul deny.
Hours before the Pakistani strikes, a suicide bomber targeted a security convoy within the border district of Bannu in Pakistan’s northwest, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel. Pakistan’s military warned after the attack that it might not “exercise any restraint” and that operations against those responsible would press on.
One other suicide bomber, backed by gunmen, rammed an explosives-laden vehicle last week into the wall of a security post in Bajaur district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, killing 11 soldiers and a toddler. Pakistani authorities later said the attacker was an Afghan national.
Tarar said Pakistan had “conclusive evidence” that the recent attacks, including a suicide bombing that targeted a Shiite mosque in Islamabad and killed 31 worshippers earlier this month, were carried out by militants acting on the “behest of their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers.”
He said Pakistan had repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to take verifiable steps to forestall militant groups from using Afghan territory to launch attacks in Pakistan, but alleged that no substantive motion had been taken. Tarar also asked the international community to press Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities to uphold their commitments under the Doha agreement not to permit their soil for use against other countries.
In Islamabad, security analyst Abdullah Khan said the Pakistani strikes suggest that Qatari, Turkish and even Saudi-led mediations have did not resolve tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “These strikes are more likely to further escalate the situation,” he said.
The Qatari-mediated ceasefire between the 2 countries got here about after deadly border clashes in October, killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. The violence followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad, on the time, conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to focus on militant hideouts.
The truce between Islamabad and Kabul has largely held, but several rounds of talks in Istanbul in November failed to supply a proper agreement, and relations remain strained.
—Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this story.
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