Islamabad on Sunday promised a “strong response” to an Afghan reprisal operation against its forces overnight along their shared border, which Kabul says killed “58 Pakistani soldiers.”
On Saturday night, the Taliban Ministry of Defense said it had successfully carried out an armed “reprisal operation” against Pakistani security forces “in response to repeated violations and airstrikes on Afghan territory by the Pakistani army.”
“Fifty-eight Pakistani soldiers were killed in this operation, and nine Taliban fighters lost their lives,” Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Sunday at a press conference.
Islamabad did not confirm the figures. “There will be no compromise on Pakistan’s defense, and every provocation will be met with a strong and effective response,” warned Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement, accusing Kabul of harboring “terrorist elements.”
“Afghanistan is playing with fire and blood,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi added, saying his neighbor will receive “a crushing response, like India, so that it dares not cast even a hostile glance at Pakistan again.” This referenced the worst confrontation with India in decades last May, involving missile exchanges, drone strikes, and artillery fire.
Zabihullah Mujahid said Sunday that “Pakistan attacked this morning, and we are ready to respond firmly.” An AFP journalist in Afghanistan’s Khost province confirmed heavy fire from Pakistan along the border.
Both countries claim to have captured enemy security posts.
Islamabad, which has not confirmed carrying out bombings in the Afghan capital or the southeast on Thursday, said Saturday night that it had been attacked along its border. It claimed to have responded to armed clashes originating from the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost, and Helmand, along the Durand Line dividing the two countries.
While Iran and Saudi Arabia called for “de-escalation,” Kabul later told AFP that its operation ended around midnight local time.
By early morning, two key Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossings—Torkham and Spin Boldak, through which thousands of Afghans expelled by Islamabad in recent months transit—were closed, Afghan and Pakistani officials told AFP.
Overnight attack
Relations between the two countries have been tense since the Taliban returned to power in summer 2021, with Islamabad accusing its neighbor of harboring Pakistani Taliban (TTP) fighters.
The TTP, formed in Afghanistan and sharing the ideology of the Afghan Taliban, is accused by Islamabad of killing hundreds of Pakistani soldiers since 2021. On Saturday, the TTP claimed deadly attacks in the country’s northwest that killed 23 people, including three civilians, near the Afghan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Islamabad says the Afghan Taliban, back in power in Kabul since 2021, enable the TTP’s resurgence. A UN Security Council report earlier this year said the TTP “has probably been the foreign extremist group in Afghanistan that benefited most” from the Taliban’s return, “which has hosted and actively supported” the movement.
Kabul strongly denies this, instead accusing Pakistan of supporting terrorist groups, including the regional branch of ISIS.
On Thursday, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Parliament that multiple attempts to persuade the Afghan Taliban to stop supporting the TTP had failed.
2024 was Pakistan’s deadliest year in nearly a decade, with more than 1,600 deaths in these conflicts, mostly soldiers.
AFP
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