Pakistan says airstrikes kill 28 militants in Afghanistan; Kabul reports three dead - TimesLIVE

Pakistani fighter jets carried out airstrikes on Monday on sites in eastern Afghanistan that Pakistani officials described as suspected militant hideouts. Pakistan said 28 militants were killed, while authorities in Kabul reported at least three deaths.

The strikes near the countries’ shared border marked a renewed escalation in tensions, raising the prospect of further cross-border hostilities. They also threatened to complicate mediation efforts by regional powers, including China.

The strikes came after Pakistan warned that it could target militants inside Afghanistan following two deadly attacks on Pakistani security forces near the border in recent days.

Militant attacks targeting Pakistan’s police and security forces have surged in recent years. The escalation follows months of military action. Hundreds of people have been killed in cross-border fighting since February, when Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes after Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghan territory.

Authorities in Islamabad have blamed the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups for most of the violence. The Pakistani Taliban are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban that returned to power in 2021.

A man sits amid household belongings and the wreckage of a house destroyed in a strike in Patan village, Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan, on Monday. Picture: (Shafiullah Kakar) Pakistan’s information ministry said security forces conducted a planned, intelligence-driven ground operation in the northwest after a series of militant attacks in Pakistan. The operation was followed by “calibrated airstrikes against the hideouts and safe havens of terrorist organisations responsible for these attacks”.

The ministry said in a post on X that the airstrikes killed 28 militants along the Afghan border.

Afghanistan’s government, however, said the strikes killed three civilians and wounded four others. The claims from either side could not immediately be independently verified.

The Pakistani officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly. Pakistan’s military did not immediately issue a statement on the strikes.

We condemn this aggression and oppression, regarding it as a repetition of such crimes. Pakistani military circles have again committed such a crime to divert attention from their country’s security failures.

In a post on X, Afghan Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid condemned the airstrikes and said there would be a response.

“We condemn this aggression and oppression, regarding it as a repetition of such crimes. Pakistani military circles have again committed such a crime to divert attention from their country’s security failures,” he wrote.

Afghan deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the strikes occurred at about 3am in the Nurgal district of Kunar Province and Barmal district of Paktika province.

Fitrat said strikes in the Rakhah and Tor Kundi areas of Barmal destroyed a shop and an unoccupied house, but caused no casualties.

Pakistan has both the will and the capability to eliminate terrorist threats wherever they are.

The strikes came a day after six Pakistani security personnel, including two army officers, were killed in a shootout with militants in Hangu, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.

On Friday, a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside a police compound in the Pakistani city of Kohat. Eight gunmen stormed offices, setting off a 20-hour gunbattle, during which at least 21 people, most of them police officers, were killed and more than 100 were wounded, Pakistani officials said.

Pakistan’s information ministry warned on Saturday that the country could strike militants inside Afghanistan in response to attacks on Pakistan. It blamed the Kohat attack on militants allegedly based in Afghanistan and accused the Afghan Taliban government of sheltering and supporting groups that carry out attacks in Pakistan.

“Pakistan has both the will and the capability to eliminate terrorist threats wherever they are,” the ministry said. It also called on Kabul to take “credible, verifiable and sustained measures” to dismantle what Pakistan describes as militant sanctuaries and recruitment and training networks in Afghanistan.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attacks in Kohat or Hangu by the time of Monday’s strikes. Suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has intensified attacks on police and other security forces in Pakistan in recent years.

The TTP is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban government in Kabul of sheltering TTP leaders and allowing militants to launch cross-border attacks. Afghanistan’s government denies the allegations.