Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan kill at least eight people, Taliban officials say

Pakistan launched two airstrikes on Afghanistan on Monday morning, killing at least eight people, Afghan officials said, escalating simmering tensions between the two countries.

The pre-dawn attacks were carried out around 3 a.m. in Paktika and Khost provinces in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said. Three children were among the dead, according to Taliban officials, who condemned the attacks as a violation of Afghan territory.

The attacks came amid a wave of attacks by militants in Pakistan since the Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have blamed the wave of attacks on militants based in Afghan territory and protected by the Taliban government. Taliban officials have denied these claims.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, said in a statement about X that his country has “a long experience in the struggle for freedom against the superpowers of the world” and “does not allow anyone to invade its territory.”

“Such incidents could have very bad consequences, which are beyond Pakistan’s control,” he added.

The Pakistani action came two days after militants attacked a military post in northwestern Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. The airstrikes targeted hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, according to a senior Pakistani security official who was not authorized to speak to the news media and requested anonymity. The Pakistani military and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The attacks put a spotlight on violence that has flared in Pakistan in recent years, disrupting a relatively quiet period since the Pakistani military carried out a major military operation in 2014, forcing militants across the border into Afghanistan.

After the US-backed government in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021, the pace of attacks by militants in Pakistan soared, with the attacks themselves becoming more brazen. In 2023, attacks by militant groups in Pakistan rose nearly 20 percent from the previous year, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The violence has fueled fears of a wider conflict erupting along the historically disputed border, known as the Durand Line, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has also fueled growing tensions between Pakistani authorities and Taliban officials, who deny providing support to militant groups operating in Pakistan, including their ally the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly asked the Taliban government in Afghanistan to rein in the militants. In response, Taliban authorities proposed to Pakistan to meet the militants’ demands and offered to mediate talks.

Pakistani authorities’ frustration with the Taliban government appeared to boil over in September, when the Pakistani government announced a policy aimed at expelling the more than half a million Afghans living illegally in Pakistan.

Monday’s attacks appeared to send a new signal to the Taliban government that the Pakistani military and newly elected government would take a tougher stance against militant violence.

The airstrikes were aimed at “dispelling the perception of a weak Pakistani state,” said Muhammad Amir Rana, head of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. They also “reflect a unified counter-terrorism policy between the new civilian government and the military,” he added.

While sporadic cross-border shelling from Pakistan regularly killed civilians in Afghanistan during the US-led war, Monday’s attacks were the first launched by Pakistan on Afghanistan in almost two years. The last attacks, in April 2022, killed at least 45 people in Khost and Kunar provinces in eastern Afghanistan.

Monday’s attacks appeared to be part of the military’s response to Saturday’s attack on the military post, a suicide bombing that killed seven members of Pakistan’s security forces. That attack also prompted the military to conduct an operation in the area and kill eight militants, according to a statement Monday from the Inter-Services Public Relations office, the media arm of the Pakistani military.

Pakistani government officials promised a sustained response to the militants’ attack.

“Pakistan has decided that whoever enters our borders, homes or country to commit terror, we will respond strongly to them regardless of their identity or country of origin,” President Asif Ali Zardari said while speaking at the funeral prayer for the slain army officers . during the attack.

Safiullah Padshah contributed reporting from Kabul; And Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.