Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanged air and ground strikes on Saturday, with both sides offering sharply different accounts of the fighting and the toll.
Pakistan’s Information Minister, Attaullah Tarar, said more than 331 Taliban fighters had been killed and over 500 wounded in ongoing Pakistani airstrikes and clashes. He told state media that Pakistani attacks hit infrastructure and arms depots at 37 locations across Afghanistan, destroyed more than 100 militant posts, captured 22 positions and disabled 163 tanks and armoured vehicles. Pakistani reports said the air force struck military installations in several eastern Afghan districts.
Pakistani authorities also said hundreds of people near the northwestern Torkham border crossing had moved to safer areas, and that dozens of Afghans waiting at the crossing were being relocated or sent home for safety.
Afghan officials provided a different narrative. Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said its forces struck Pakistani military bases in Miranshah and Spin Wam overnight, destroying installations and inflicting heavy casualties in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes. Mullah Taj Mohammad Naqshbandi, a commissioner on the Afghan side of the Torkham border, claimed the “brave forces of the Islamic Emirate destroyed the Pakistani military regime’s commissariat, military units, and three important security towers.”
Afghan authorities also said they 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 striking civilian areas, destroying homes and killing at least 11 people. Pakistan insists its strikes are aimed only at militant and military targets to avoid civilian harm.
The violence follows days of mounting tension along the porous 2,500-kilometre frontier. Kabul says the clashes were provoked by Pakistan’s earlier strikes on Islamist militants; Islamabad says militants based in Afghanistan carried out deadly cross-border attacks on Pakistani soil. In recent days Pakistan has launched strikes deep inside Afghanistan, including on military facilities in Kabul. Pakistani Defence 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 powers—including the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran—have offered to mediate a ceasefire, but no breakthrough has been reported.
Edited by: Rana Taha