Two children died and 10 people suffered injuries when Pakistani military forces fired mortar rounds into Afghanistan’s Khost province overnight, according to Afghan officials who reported the violence Monday as border hostilities entered their third straight week.
Mustaghfar Gurbaz, who speaks for the provincial governor, confirmed that the mortar bombardment from Pakistan destroyed multiple residential buildings in villages throughout the southeastern region.
The deadly incident followed Pakistan’s report Sunday that an Afghan mortar strike hit a residence in the northwestern Bajaur district, resulting in four family members’ deaths and injuring two others, including a young child aged 5. Local residents and Pakistani officials stated their military retaliated Monday by attacking Afghan border positions where the previous day’s assault originated, inflicting significant casualties.
Afghan authorities have not yet responded to requests for comment regarding the retaliatory strikes.
These border confrontations, which have featured several Pakistani aerial bombardments targeting Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul, represent some of the most severe violence between the neighboring countries in recent memory.
Pakistani leadership has characterized the current situation as an “open war.” President Asif Ali Zardari declared that Afghanistan’s Taliban government violated a “red line” when they deployed drone aircraft that injured multiple Pakistani civilians during the previous week.
Pakistan’s air force responded to those drone incidents over the weekend by bombing equipment storage facilities and what they termed “technical support infrastructure” located in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, claiming these sites supported attacks within Pakistani territory. Kabul officials confirmed Pakistan struck two separate locations: an unoccupied security installation and a drug treatment facility that sustained minimal damage.
Afghanistan’s administrative Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi declared overnight in Kabul that protecting national sovereignty becomes every citizen’s responsibility when territorial integrity faces violation.
During discussions with political commentators and journalists, Hanafi expressed sorrow regarding civilian deaths from recent Pakistani military actions, stating that warfare had been forced upon Afghanistan.
Pakistan, however, maintains that Kabul provides sanctuary to extremist organizations, specifically the Pakistani Taliban, which allegedly conducts terrorist operations on Pakistani soil. Afghan officials reject these accusations, insisting they prohibit their territory from being utilized for attacks against neighboring nations.
The current military confrontation began in late February when Afghanistan initiated cross-border assaults responding to Pakistani airstrikes within Afghan territory that Kabul claimed killed innocent civilians. These clashes shattered a Qatar-mediated truce established in October following earlier violence that resulted in dozens of military personnel, civilian, and suspected militant deaths.
