ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani jet fighters carried out airstrikes Monday on what security officials described as suspected militant hideouts in eastern Afghanistan, and claimed 28 of them were killed.
Authorities in Kabul said at least three people were killed.
The strikes near the frontier between the two countries marked a renewed escalation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, raising the prospect of further cross-border hostilities and threatening to complicate efforts by regional countries including China to mediate between Islamabad and Kabul.
They came after Pakistan warned it could target militants inside Afghanistan following two deadly attacks in recent days on its security forces near the border.
Militant attacks targeting Pakistan’s police and security forces have surged in recent years. The escalation follows months of military action. Hundreds of people have been killed in cross-border fighting since February, when Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes after Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghan territory.
Authorities in Islamabad have blamed the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups for most of the violence. The Pakistani Taliban are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban that returned to power in 2021.
Two Pakistani security officials said 28 suspected militants were killed in Monday's airstrikes. Afghanistan’s government, however, said the strikes killed three civilians and wounded four others. The claims from either side could not immediately be independently verified.
The Pakistani officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistan’s military did not immediately issue a statement on the strikes.
In a post on X, Afghan Taliban government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid condemned the airstrikes and said there would be a response.
“We condemn this aggression and oppression, regarding it as a repetition of such crimes. Pakistani military circles have once again committed such a crime to divert attention from their country’s security failures,” he wrote.
Afghan deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the strikes occurred around 3 a.m. in Nurgal district of Kunar province and Barmal district of Paktika province. Citing preliminary information, Fitrat said a home belonging to a villager named Noor Ahmad in Nurgal’s Pathan village was destroyed, killing Ahmad and two members of his family and wounding four other relatives.
Fitrat said strikes in the Rakhah and Tor Kundi areas of Barmal destroyed a shop and an unoccupied house, but caused no casualties.
The strikes came a day after six Pakistani security personnel, including two army officers, were killed in a shootout with militants in Hangu, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.
They also followed a deadly attack Friday in the Pakistani city of Kohat, where a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside a police compound and eight gunmen stormed offices, setting off a 20-hour gunbattle. At least 21 people, most of them police officers, were killed and more than 100 were wounded, Pakistani officials said.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry warned Saturday that the country could strike militants inside Afghanistan in response to attacks in Pakistan. The ministry blamed the Kohat attack on militants it said were based in Afghanistan and accused the Afghan Taliban government of sheltering and supporting groups that carry out attacks in Pakistan.
“Pakistan has both the will and the capability to eliminate terrorist threats wherever they are,” the ministry said.
The ministry also called on Kabul to take “credible, verifiable and sustained measures” to dismantle what Pakistan says are militant sanctuaries and recruitment and training networks in Afghanistan.
No group had claimed responsibility for the Kohat or Hangu attacks by the time of Monday’s strikes. Suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has intensified attacks on police and other security forces in Pakistan in recent years.
The TTP is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, which returned to power in 2021. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban government in Kabul of sheltering TTP leaders and allowing militants to launch cross-border attacks. Afghanistan’s government denies the allegations.
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Afghan reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Associated Press writer Riaz Khan contributed to the story from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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