Pakistani reprisal strikes kill dozens in Afghanistan

Pakistan carried out retaliatory airstrikes along its border with Afghanistan on Sunday night, following a terror attack on a paramilitary camp in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said Monday that the air and land strikes by Pakistani forces had killed 29 militants. Afghanistan, however, alleged that those killed were civilians, including women and children.

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the strikes, called Operation Ghazb Lil-Haq, were in response to attacks inside Pakistan by armed groups. On Saturday night, terrorists struck a paramilitary compound in the port city of Karachi. Three soldiers were killed in the attack on the Sindh Rangers’ facility, in the city’s first major terrorist strike since October 2024. Pakistani security forces killed six terrorists and captured one alive.

“Security forces precisely struck terrorist camps and safe havens of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and Fitna al-Khwarij in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar,” Tarar posted on X, identifying the three eastern Afghanistan provinces as the locations.

Tarar claimed the operation was aimed at “eliminating terrorists and destroying weapons and ammunition stockpiles.”

However, the Taliban government’s deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, said the Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 36 civilians and wounded 163 others. In an X post, he blamed the “aggressor Pakistani military regime” for the strikes.

Bilateral ties between Islamabad and Kabul have become strained after Islamabad accused Afghanistan of hosting militants who carry out attacks across their common but porous border.

The bombing of a mosque in Islamabad in February, which killed more than 30 people, also spurred retaliatory strikes by Pakistan, which alleged the Taliban’s complicity in the attack, which the latter denied.

Afghanistan also accused Pakistan of carrying out an airstrike on Kabul’s 2,000-bed Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital that killed at least 400 people in March.

Islamabad has repeatedly said its strikes in Afghanistan are aimed at insurgents carrying out attacks on its territory and that it does not target civilians. Pakistan partly attributes the strain in its relationship with Kabul to the Taliban regime’s increasing engagement with Islamabad’s longtime rival, India.