PESHAWAR — Pakistan launched airstrikes and sent ground troops into Afghan provinces along its border on Sunday, killing 36 civilians and wounding 163 others, the Taliban government said on Monday, as attacks between the two countries showed no sign of abating.
Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the operations on Sunday night were aimed at a terror group that his country blames for a deadly militant attack in Karachi that killed three security personnel over the weekend.
Tarar said Pakistani security forces had carried out an “intelligence-based ground operation” followed by airstrikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border targeting terrorist hideouts over the border.
Afghan authorities have repeatedly denied their territory harbors militants. The Taliban government said on Monday the airstrikes in three eastern provinces killed or wounded dozens of civilians.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the military action, calling it a “cowardly act of aggression”.
The strikes are the latest flare-up of violence between the two countries whose relationship has been fraught since the Taliban government took power in 2021, and follow a weeks-long war that erupted in February.
The attacks on Sunday come a day after three members of the Sindh Rangers, a Pakistani paramilitary force, were killed at their headquarters in Karachi, according to Pakistan’s military. Three militants also died in the suicide attack, and Pakistani officials said they had arrested a fourth, who was an Afghan.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter faction of the TTP, claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack.
Both the TTP, also known as the Pakistan Taliban, and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar are banned in Pakistan, and by the United Nations, because of their involvement in past attacks.
Kabul has previously accused Islamabad of carrying out unprovoked attacks in which civilians were killed — though Pakistan says it only targets militants.
The two countries had agreed to a ceasefire last October following weeks of deadly clashes. As with past internationally-mediated truce deals, however, that ceasefire has since fallen apart.
Afghanistan said the strikes hit civilian homes, while Pakistan says they were targeted at militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces.
Casualties were concentrated in Mandikhel, a village in the Paktika province, Taliban officials say.
Intermittent border clashes and airstrikes in the border area have killed dozens of people in recent months, according to officials in both countries.
In February, clashes between the two countries left dozens of people dead. In March, a Pakistani strike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul killed hundreds.
Earlier in June, Pakistan launched deadly air strikes that killed 26 militants. Afghanistan’s Taliban government said 13 people, mostly children, were also killed in the strikes.
Source: Saudi Gazette