Pakistan carries out airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan, 28 militants killed
Pakistani fighter jets carried out airstrikes on suspected militant hideouts in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, killing 28 suspected militants, according to two Pakistani security officials.
Authorities in Kabul said the strikes killed at least three civilians and wounded four others.
The strikes near the border marked a renewed escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, raising the prospect of further cross-border hostilities and complicating efforts by regional countries, including China, to mediate between Islamabad and Kabul.
The strikes came after Pakistan warned it could target militants inside Afghanistan following two deadly attacks on its security forces near the border in recent days.
Militant attacks targeting Pakistan’s police and security forces have surged in recent years following 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.
Islamabad has 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, which returned to power in 2021.
Two Pakistani security officials said 28 suspected militants were killed in Monday’s strikes. Afghanistan’s government, however, said the strikes killed three civilians and wounded four others. The claims 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.
Afghan Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid condemned the airstrikes in a post on X and said there would be a response.
Afghan deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the strikes occurred around 3am in Nurgal district of Kunar province and Barmal district of Paktika province.
Citing preliminary information, Fitrat said a home belonging to a villager named Noor Ahmad in Nurgal’s Pathan village was destroyed, killing Ahmad and two members of his family and wounding four other relatives.
He said strikes in the Rakhah and Tor Kundi areas of Barmal destroyed a shop and an unoccupied house but caused no casualties.
The strikes came a day after six Pakistani security personnel, including two army officers, were killed in a shootout with militants in Hangu district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.
They also followed a deadly attack on Friday in the Pakistani city of Kohat, where a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside a police compound and eight gunmen stormed offices, triggering a 20-hour gunbattle. 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 in Pakistan. The ministry blamed the Kohat attack on militants it said were 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.
The ministry also called on Kabul to take “credible, verifiable and sustained measures” to dismantle what Pakistan says are militant sanctuaries and recruitment and training networks in Afghanistan.
No group had claimed responsibility for the Kohat or Hangu attacks by Monday. 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 government. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the government in Kabul of sheltering TTP leaders and allowing militants to launch cross-border attacks.