(Kabul) Pakistani army fire against eastern Afghanistan on Saturday left around 50 dead, according to new reports released by Afghan officials on Sunday, with Pakistan demanding “severe measures” from Kabul against militants attacking its own territory.
Updated yesterday at 11:33 a.m.
Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan last year, border tensions between the two countries have increased, with Pakistan claiming that armed groups, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have been carrying out attacks since Afghan soil, across a notoriously porous border.
“Forty-one civilians, mostly women and children, were killed, and 22 were injured in airstrikes carried out by Pakistani forces near the Durand line in Khost province,” said Shabir Ahmad Osmani, director information and culture in Khost.
Two other officials confirmed this toll to Khost. Another Afghan official reported on Saturday 6 dead in Kunar province.
“Pakistani helicopters bombarded four villages near the Durand line in Khost province. Only civilian homes were targeted and there were casualties,” an Afghan official said on Saturday, on condition of anonymity, without further details.
Footage of houses destroyed in the assault was broadcast by Tolo News, Afghanistan’s main private channel.
“All those targeted were innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the Taliban or the government,” Rasool Jan, a resident of Khost, told the channel.
“We don’t know who our enemy is and why we were targeted,” he added.
Hundreds of civilians demonstrated in Khost on Saturday, chanting anti-Pakistani slogans, according to photographs obtained by AFP.
According to Najibullah, an official with the Afghan Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the death toll from these attacks is 48 in Khost province.
“Twenty-four people were killed in one family,” he told AFP.
Jamshid, tribal leader of Khost province also estimated that the death toll exceeded 40.
“Yesterday I went there with other people to donate blood to the wounded in the Khost strikes,” he said.
The Pakistani army has not confirmed carrying out these attacks.
Pakistan contented itself with calling on the Taliban government in Kabul on Sunday to take “severe measures” against militants who launch attacks against the country from inside Afghanistan.
“Pakistan, once again, strongly condemns terrorists who operate with impunity from Afghan soil to carry out activities in Pakistan,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Islamabad called on the Afghan government “to secure the Pakistan-Afghan border region and to take tough action against individuals involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan”.
On Thursday, seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in the North Waziristan district by “terrorists operating from Afghanistan”, the ministry said.
The Afghan Taliban deny sheltering Pakistani militants and denounce the fence that Islamabad erects to secure this long border of more than 2000 km, known as the Durand line, a name inherited from the colonial era.
“Enmity”
Aghanistan warned Pakistan on Saturday. “We are implementing all measures to prevent the repetition (of such attacks) and demand that our sovereignty be respected. The Pakistani side must know that if a war breaks out, it will not be in the interest of either side,” warned government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
“It is cruel and it opens the way to enmity between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the spokesperson lamented.
The Afghan Taliban and the TTP are separate groups in the two countries, but they share a common ideology and rely on the people who live on opposite sides of the border.
Thousands of people usually cross the border every day, including traders, Afghans seeking treatment in Pakistan and people visiting relatives.