Pakistan launches deadliest attack on Afghanistan in months

Pakistan launched its deadliest attack on Afghanistan in months, with Islamabad saying on Monday it killed dozens of militants as the Afghan government reported civilian casualties.

The nighttime strikes are the latest flare-up of violence between the neighbours whose relationship has been fraught since 2021, when the Taliban government took power in Kabul, and follow a weeks-long war that erupted in February.

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Pakistan’s information minister said air and ground operations killed 29 militants and were aimed at a group that it blames for a deadly weekend assault in Karachi, although Afghan authorities have repeatedly denied their territory harbours attackers.

The Taliban government said the airstrikes hit three eastern provinces, killing 36 civilians and wounding 163.

A resident of Paktia province, Adam Khan, said he “cannot put into words the condition of the children I saw at the hospital, or the screams of their parents and siblings”.

Those killed in one of the strikes “were innocent civilians, including children, elderly people and women” sleeping in a house, the 63-year-old told AFP.

In neighbouring Paktika province, community leader Amin Mangal told AFP a Pakistani strike on a house killed six people.

“They were very poor and helpless, had no working man in the household, and were living with the help of charity,” Mangal said.

The Pakistani operation along the border is the deadliest since March, when an attack on a drug treatment centre in Kabul killed hundreds according to the United Nations.

Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the latest offensive targeted Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

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Hamdullah Fitrat, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman, said the Paktia site “was bombed for a second time” after residents rushed to rescue people.

Pakistan’s military and the prime minister’s office did not respond to an AFP request to comment on the allegation.

In the countries’ capitals, the foreign ministries summoned each other’s diplomats over the attack in Afghanistan’s border area and earlier in Pakistan’s megacity Karachi.

In Paktia’s Tsamkani district, hundreds of mourners gathered before the funeral beds of some of those killed.

Mediation from several countries, including China, has failed to produce a lasting resolution between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Their war earlier this year killed hundreds of Afghans and displaced tens of thousands, according to the UN.

There have been sporadic attacks since a ceasefire reached in March, with Pakistani strikes in June killing 13 people, Afghan officials said.

Islamabad is mediating between the United States and Iran to end their war in the Middle East, but Pakistan says its battle against militancy at home requires its strikes on Afghanistan.

Explosives were detonated and gunmen opened fire inside a Rangers paramilitary camp in Karachi on Saturday in one of the worst militant attacks in Pakistan’s most populous city in years.

Authorities said three paramilitary personnel were killed and that they had detained an Afghan involved in the attack.

Pakistan says its forces use “precise targeting” to aim at militant hideouts and weapons stores, especially those of the TTP that has waged a violent campaign against Pakistan for years.

Afghan authorities have repeatedly denied that the country is used by militants and say Pakistani operations have caused a heavy civilian death toll.

The conflict earlier this year saw the two militaries engage in fierce fighting in border areas, along with unprecedented Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan cities, including the capital Kabul and southern Kandahar where the Afghan Taliban’s supreme leader is based.

The frontier has been largely closed since cross-border violence broke out in October.

AFP