Taliban leaders said that after eight people were slain on Monday in “reckless” airstrikes by Pakistan’s military in Afghanistan’s border regions, Afghan troops retaliated on Pakistani military bases.
Since the Taliban regime took office in 2021, tensions along the border have gotten worse, according to Islamabad, which claims armed organizations are regularly attacking from Afghanistan.
According to Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, at approximately 3:00 am (2230 GMT Sunday), Pakistani aircraft “bombed civilian homes” in the provinces of Khost and Paktika, which are close to the Pakistani border. All of the victims were women and children.
According to Afghanistan’s ministry of defense, its border forces used “heavy weapons” in retaliation to attack Pakistan’s military outposts along the border.
Both sides reported cross-border clashes in the area on Monday, the most recent in a run of confrontations on the disputed frontier.
In his statement, Mujahid stated that the Taliban leadership “strongly condemns these attacks and calls this reckless action a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty”.
“Such incidents can have very bad consequences which will be out (of) Pakistan’s control.”
The foreign ministry of Pakistan affirmed its involvement in “anti-terrorist operations in the border regions inside Afghanistan” on Monday.
It claimed in a statement that it was going after the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, one of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a local branch of the Pakistani Taliban, that was in charge of the recent uptick in border violence against law enforcement and security personnel.
The United States called on Pakistan, which was previously a crucial ally in its fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, to “exercise restraint” in response to the strikes.
“We urge the Taliban to ensure that terrorist attacks are not launched from Afghan soil and we urge Pakistan to exercise restraint and ensure civilians are not harmed in their counterterrorism efforts,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
