Pakistan launches deadly strikes on Afghanistan

Pakistan has carried out multiple overnight air strikes on Afghanistan, which the Taliban has said killed at least 18 people, including women and children.

Islamabad said the attacks targeted seven alleged militant camps and hideouts near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and that they had been launched after recent suicide bombings in Pakistan.

Afghanistan condemned the attacks, saying they targeted multiple civilian homes and a religious school.

The fresh strikes come after the two countries agreed to a fragile ceasefire in October following deadly cross-border clashes, though subsequent fighting has taken place.

The Taliban’s Defence Ministry said the strikes targeted civilian areas of Nangarhar and Paktika provinces and had killed dozens of people.

In Girdi Kas village, in the Bihsud district of Nangarhar, a man named Shahabuddin told reporters while pointing at his destroyed house that of 23 members of his family, only five had survived the attack.

Local Taliban spokesman Sayed Taib Hamd said that 18 members of the family had been killed.

No deaths have been reported so far in the other areas hit. A guesthouse and a religious school were targeted in the Bermal and Urgun districts of Pakitka province, but they were empty at the time of the attacks, local officials and locals told the BBC.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it had carried out “intelligence based selective targeting of seven terrorist camps and hideouts”.

In a statement on X, it said the targets included members of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which the government refers to as “Fitna al Khawarij,” along with their affiliates and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province.

The Ministry described the strikes as “a retributive response” to recent suicide bombings in Pakistan by terror groups it said were sheltered by Kabul.

The recent attacks in Pakistan included one on a Shia Mosque in the capital Islamabad earlier this month, as well as others that took place since the Holy month of Ramadan began this week in the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Pakistan accused the Afghan Taliban of failing to take action against the militants, adding that it had “conclusive evidence” that the attacks were carried out by militants on the instructions of their leadership in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s defence ministry later posted on X condemning the attacks as a “blatant violation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity”, adding that they were a “clear breach of international law”.

It warned that “an appropriate and measured response will be taken at a suitable time”, adding that “attacks on civilian targets and religious institutions indicate the failure of Pakistan’s army in intelligence and security.”

The strikes come days after Saudi Arabia mediated the release of three Pakistani soldiers earlier this week, who were captured in Kabul during border clashes last October.

Those clashes ended with a tentative ceasefire that same month after the worst fighting since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 1,600-mile mountainous border.