KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 36 civilians are dead and more than 160 others were injured after Pakistani military forces carried out overnight airstrikes inside Afghanistan, Afghan officials announced Monday, deepening an already volatile conflict between the two neighboring nations.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said security forces first conducted a ground operation along the shared border late Sunday, then followed up with strikes against what officials described as militant hideouts and safe havens. Pakistani authorities reported 29 fighters were killed in the operations, which they said were launched in direct response to a series of militant attacks carried out inside Pakistan.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government sharply condemned the strikes, calling them a “cowardly act of aggression” and an “act of brutality.”
Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, said Pakistani forces initially struck a residence in the Chamkani district of Paktia province, killing an elderly man and a child while injuring several other family members. When local residents rushed to the scene to help the wounded, the area was struck a second time, leaving 28 villagers dead and 158 more injured, Fitrat said.
Six additional people — most of them women and children — were killed when another home was hit in the Giyan district of Paktika province, according to Fitrat. A separate home in Kunar province was also struck, though no human casualties were reported there; approximately 30 livestock were killed.
Militant attacks on Pakistan’s police and security personnel have risen sharply in recent years. Pakistani authorities have attributed most of the violence to the Pakistani Taliban — formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP — along with allied militant organizations. The Pakistani Taliban, while distinct from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, share an alliance with the Afghan Taliban, who reclaimed power in 2021.
The military operation came after a militant assault on the regional headquarters of Pakistan’s paramilitary Rangers in Karachi, which left three soldiers dead. Pakistani security forces killed three of the attackers and captured a fourth, who the military identified as a wounded Afghan national. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack.
Sunday’s strikes and ground operation took place less than three weeks after Pakistan’s military conducted a previous round of airstrikes on alleged militant positions inside Afghanistan — ending roughly a month of relative quiet following what Islamabad had characterized as an “open war” between the two countries, despite international efforts to negotiate a durable peace agreement.
The latest violence is part of a months-long cycle of retaliatory military exchanges. Hundreds of lives have been lost in cross-border clashes since February, when Afghanistan launched its own strikes in response to earlier Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan soil.
Numerous rounds of diplomatic talks have failed to produce a lasting ceasefire. China brought both sides together for negotiations in April, and Beijing later reported that Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed to avoid further escalation and to work toward a peaceful resolution.
