Pakistan and Afghanistan continued to exchange strikes on Saturday, with each side offering conflicting accounts of the fighting and disputing the other’s claims.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said more than 331 Taliban fighters had been killed and over 500 wounded during ongoing airstrikes and clashes. He said Pakistani air attacks had hit infrastructure and arms stockpiles at 37 locations across Afghanistan. The minister also claimed Pakistani forces had destroyed more than 100 Afghan posts, captured 22 others, and put out of action 163 tanks and armoured vehicles. State-run Pakistani media reported that the air force struck key military installations in several areas of eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities said hundreds of residents near the northwestern Torkham border crossing had sought refuge in safer areas, and that dozens of Afghans waiting at the crossing had been moved to safer locations or returned home.
Afghan authorities gave a different account. Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said Afghan forces attacked Pakistani military bases in Miranshah and Spin Wam overnight, destroying installations and inflicting heavy casualties in response to Pakistan’s airstrikes. Mullah Taj Mohammad Naqshbandi, an Afghan commissioner on the Afghan side of the Torkham border, said the “brave forces of the Islamic Emirate destroyed the Pakistani military regime’s commissariat, military units, and three important security towers.”
Afghan officials also claimed their forces shot down a Pakistani jet over Jalalabad and captured its pilot; Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry called that claim “totally untrue.” The Department of Information and Culture in eastern Afghanistan accused Pakistan of targeting civilian areas, destroying homes and killing at least 11 people. Pakistan maintains it is aiming only at military targets to avoid civilian casualties.
The clashes followed days of tension along the porous 2,500-kilometre frontier, which Afghanistan said were sparked by Pakistan’s earlier targeting of Islamist militants. Islamabad says militants operating from Afghan territory carried out deadly cross-border attacks. In response, Pakistan launched airstrikes deep inside Afghanistan, including strikes on military facilities in Kabul. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif accused the Taliban leadership of sheltering “all sorts of terrorists” and said Pakistan was in “an open war” with its neighbour.
Regional actors have urged an immediate ceasefire. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran have offered to mediate, but as yet there has been no breakthrough.
Edited by: Rana Taha