Pakistan said its border posts were attacked by Afghan Taliban forces on Tuesday, touching off renewed fighting that Islamabad says left 67 Afghan fighters and one Pakistani soldier dead. Afghanistan called Pakistan’s account “baseless,” and the Taliban-run government in Kabul said its forces had repulsed Pakistani strikes and killed four Pakistani soldiers.
The violence escalated after Taliban troops launched a border offensive last Thursday, which Kabul said was in response to Pakistani airstrikes over the previous weekend. Pakistan has described the situation as an “open war” with Afghanistan and carried out strikes on multiple sites, including the former US air base at Bagram and locations in Kabul and Kandahar.
The UN mission in Afghanistan reported that, since the clashes began, 42 civilians had been killed and 104 wounded. The UN World Food Programme said about 20,000 families had been displaced. The UN appealed for an immediate halt to the fighting, warning it was worsening an already severe humanitarian crisis and noting that dozens of civilians were killed by indirect fire hitting residential areas.
Official casualty counts vary sharply. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi told a Kabul briefing that Afghan forces had launched a counteroffensive along the Durand Line in the previous 24 hours; he reported 28 Afghan soldiers killed and claimed roughly 150 Pakistani troop fatalities. Pakistan, by contrast, has at times put the total Pakistani military dead at about 150 and said more than 450 Afghan fighters have been killed since the fighting began. Independent verification of either side’s figures was not available.
Islamabad accuses Kabul of sheltering fighters from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that has carried out attacks inside Pakistan; Kabul rejects that allegation. Afghanistan’s defense officials have said they will not allow any group to operate from their territory against other countries.
The current round of violence is the worst since cross-border clashes in October that killed more than 70 people on both sides. Several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement. Pakistan says it will continue military operations until Afghanistan takes steps to restrain the TTP and other militant groups; at the same time, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “never too late to talk,” while vowing to “finish this menace.”
Independent observers and humanitarian agencies have urged both sides to de-escalate to prevent further civilian casualties and displacement.