Pakistan carried out airstrikes on eastern Afghanistan early Monday that killed eight civilians and led to a response from Kabul with “heavy weapons” fire on border areas.
Hours later, Washington called on Islamabad to “show restraint” and Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban to control extremists.
The Taliban government “strongly condemned these attacks”, through its spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, who threatened Islamabad with “consequences that Pakistan would not be able to control”.
The Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on X that it had summoned the Pakistani charge d’affaires to protest against these strikes.
Since the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul in 2021, border tensions between the two Muslim countries have escalated.
Pakistan claims that armed groups, such as the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), carry out planned attacks from Afghan soil, across a very porous border.
“Around 3 a.m. Pakistani aircraft bombed the homes of civilians […] in Paktika province […] killing six” and “in Khost province […] two women were killed,” announced Zabihullah Mujahid.
Both countries later reported border clashes.
The Afghan Defense Ministry announced that its forces responded to the Pakistani strikes with “heavy weapons” fire on military targets on the border.
“The defense and security forces […] will defend territorial integrity at all costs,” ministry spokesperson Enayatullah Khwarizmi warned on X.
A Pakistani official in the border regions, who requested anonymity, confirmed to AFP that Afghan forces had bombarded Pakistani territory on Monday morning, leading to clashes with the Pakistani army.
“Announcements have been made in mosques for the evacuation of areas of Kurram and North Waziristan districts while sporadic clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan are taking place on the border,” he said in morning.
It was not known at the end of the afternoon whether the clashes were continuing.
“Firm” response
The airstrikes come two days after attackers killed seven soldiers in northwest Pakistan’s North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan.
This attack was attributed by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to “terrorists”.
He promised that Islamabad would respond “firmly” and “regardless of who it is and what country it comes from.”
The Afghan government has always denied harboring foreign armed groups using Afghan soil to launch attacks against its neighbors.
The TTP said in a statement on Monday that it had not been targeted by the Pakistani strikes, assuring that its members were operating from Pakistan.
For Pakistani analyst Saira Aqil, “Pakistan cannot afford to lose an ally like Afghanistan”, despite the increase in attacks on its soil which “inevitably lead to reprisals”.
“Combat aircraft and drones”
A tribal leader from the Spera district of Khost province explained to AFP that at 3:30 a.m. local time, a first drone had caused him and other residents to flee into the mountains.
“Then two fighter planes [nous] bombed, and then a drone,” and several people were killed.
“All those targeted were refugees from Waziristan, they are not terrorists,” he added. “The Pakistani government made us flee our homes [au Waziristan] and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan does not pay attention to us.”
Waziristan is one of the former semi-autonomous tribal areas in the northwest of the country, where the Pakistani army carried out numerous operations against insurgents linked to the Al-Qaeda network and the Taliban after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its NATO allies.
Many people from tribal areas took refuge in Afghanistan after the launch in 2014 of a military operation which made it possible to drive out the TTP.
The TTP had killed tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces between its creation in 2007 and 2014.
Shooting by the Pakistani army against eastern Afghanistan in April 2022 left around fifty dead, Islamabad having demanded from Kabul “severe measures” against the militants who attack its territory.