Pakistan Launches Deadly Attack Across Afghanistan Border
Pakistan said early Sunday that it had carried out strikes along its border with Afghanistan, targeting hideouts of Pakistani militants it blames for a series of recent attacks inside the country. Officials in Islamabad did not initially specify the precise locations of the strikes. According to reports, the operations also targetted the Ghani Khelo and Garda Samia districts inside Afghanistan. Local reports said at least 18 Afghan civilians were killed in the strikes. There was no immediate comment from authorities in Kabul.
In comments posted before dawn on X, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the military had conducted what he described as “intelligence-based, selective operations” against seven camps belonging to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and its affiliates. He added that an affiliate of the Islamic State group had also been targeted in the border region.
Pakistan carried out similar strikes deep inside Afghanistan in October, also aimed at militant hideouts.
Tarar said Pakistan “has always strived to maintain peace and stability in the region,” but added that protecting the safety and security of Pakistani citizens remained the government’s top priority.
The latest strikes follow a string of deadly attacks in northwestern Pakistan. Days earlier, a suicide bomber, backed by gunmen, drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the wall of a security post in the Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan. The blast caused part of the compound to collapse, killing 11 soldiers and a child. Authorities later said the attacker was an Afghan national.
Hours before the reported cross-border strikes, another suicide bomber targeted a security convoy in the nearby Bannu district, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel.
After Saturday’s violence, Pakistan’s military warned it would not “exercise any restraint” and that operations against those responsible would continue “irrespective of their location,” language that suggested rising tensions between Islamabad and Kabul.
Tarar said Pakistan had “conclusive evidence” that recent attacks — including a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad earlier this month that killed 31 worshippers — were carried out by militants acting on the “behest of their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers.”
He said Pakistan had repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to take verifiable steps to prevent militant groups from using Afghan territory to launch attacks across the border, but alleged that no substantive action had been taken.
Pakistan is urging the international community to press Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities to uphold their commitments under the Doha agreement not to allow their soil to be used against other countries.
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan in recent years, much of it attributed to the TTP and banned Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from, but closely allied with, Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in 2021. Islamabad has long accused the TTP of operating from sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, a charge denied by both the group and officials in Kabul.
Relations between the two neighbors have remained strained since October, when deadly border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. Those confrontations followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan.
A ceasefire brokered by Qatar has largely held, but talks in Istanbul failed to produce a formal agreement, and tensions between the two countries remain high.
