Airstrikes hit Afghanistan hours after it attacked Pakistan

(AP) — Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, Afghanistan's government spokesman said, hours after Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan. It is the latest escalation of violence between the volatile neighbours that made a Qatar-mediated ceasefire appear increasingly shaky.

At least three explosions were heard in Kabul, but there was no immediate information on the exact location of the strikes in the Afghan capital, or of any potential casualties. Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Pakistan also carried out airstrikes in Kandahar to the south and in the southeastern province of Paktia.

Afghanistan said its military launched its attack across the border into Pakistan late Thursday in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday, and claimed to have captured more than a dozen Pakistani army posts.

Pakistan’s government, which had described last Sunday’s airstrikes as an attack on militants harbored in the area, described Thursday’s Afghan attack as unprovoked, and dismissed claims that army posts had been captured.

“In response to the repeated rebellions and insurrections of the Pakistani military, large-scale offensive operations were launched against Pakistani military bases and military installations along the Durand Line,” Mujahid said in a post on X Thursday night. Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said the retaliatory attacks occurred along the border in six provinces.

The two countries’ 2,611-kilometre (1,622-mile) long border is known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognised.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres “is following with concern the reports of cross-border clashes,” his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement, adding that “the Secretary-General urges the parties to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy."

The two sides reported widely differing casualty figures.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed, including some whose bodies had been taken into Afghanistan, while “several others were captured alive.” It put its own casualties at eight killed and another 11 wounded. The ministry said it had destroyed 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases, and that the fighting had ended at midnight, about four hours after the start of the attack.

Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, however, said the number of Pakistani soldiers killed stood at two, with three others wounded. He said 36 Afghan fighters had been reported killed. In a post on X, he said Pakistan was giving a “strong and effective response” to what he called unprovoked firing from Afghanistan.

Militant violence has surged in Pakistan in recent years, much of which Pakistan blames on the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Islamabad accuses the TTP of operating from inside Afghanistan, a charge both the group and Kabul deny.

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