Pakistan, Afghanistan trade airstrikes, attacks
Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, Afghanistan’s government spokesperson said, hours after Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan in the latest escalation of violence between the volatile neighbors that made a Qatar-mediated ceasefire appear increasingly shaky.
At least three explosions were heard in Kabul, but there was no immediate information on the exact location of the strikes in the Afghan capital, or of any potential casualties. Government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Pakistan also carried out airstrikes in Kandahar to the south and in the southeastern province of Paktia.
Offensive operations
Afghanistan said its military launched its attack across the border into Pakistan late Thursday in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday, and claimed to have captured more than a dozen Pakistani army posts.
Pakistan’s government, which had described last Sunday’s airstrikes as an attack on militants harbored in the area, described Thursday’s Afghan attack as unprovoked, and dismissed claims that army posts had been captured.
“In response to the repeated rebellions and insurrections of the Pakistani military, large-scale offensive operations were launched against Pakistani military bases and military installations along the Durand Line,” Mujahid said in a post on X Thursday night. Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said the retaliatory attacks occurred along the border in six provinces.
Pakistan’s defense minister said that his country ran out of “patience” and considers that there is now an “open war” with Afghanistan.
In a post on X, Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Nato forces and expected the Taliban to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability. Instead, he alleged, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan “into a colony of India,” gathered militants from around the world and begun “exporting terrorism.”
Durand Line
“Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us,” he said.
The two countries’ 2,611-kilometer (1,622-mile) long border is known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognized.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres “is following with concern the reports of cross-border clashes,” his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement, adding that “the Secretary General urges the parties to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy.”
The two sides reported widely differing casualty figures.
Afghanistan’s defense ministry said 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed, including some whose bodies had been taken into Afghanistan, while “several others were captured alive.” It put its own casualties at eight killed and another 11 wounded.
The ministry said it had destroyed 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases, and that the fighting had ended at midnight, about four hours after the start of the attack.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, however, said the number of Pakistani soldiers killed stood at two, with three others wounded. He said 36 Afghan fighters had been reported killed. In a post on X, he said Pakistan was giving a “strong and effective response” to what he called unprovoked firing from Afghanistan.
Mosharraf Ali Zaidi, spokesperson for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, denied that any Pakistani soldiers had been captured.
Both sides also reported exchanges of fire in the Torkham border area.
Border clashes
Tension has been high between the two neighbors for months, with 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, at the time, conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to target militant hideouts.
A Qatari-mediated ceasefire between the two countries has largely held, but the two sides have still occasionally traded fire across the border. Several rounds of peace talks in November failed to produce a formal agreement.
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan in recent years, much of which Pakistan blames on the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban.
