Kabul, Feb 26: Afghanistan’s military launched an attack Thursday on Pakistan to retaliate for Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas earlier in the week, claiming to have captured more than a dozen Pakistani army posts in the latest escalation of violence between the volatile neighbours.
Pakistan’s government, which had described Sunday’s airstrikes as an attack on militants harboured in the area, confirmed clashes were taking place Thursday along the border but dismissed claims that army posts had been captured. It called Afghanistan’s attacks Thursday unprovoked.
Afghanistan’s military corps in the east said in a statement that “heavy clashes” had begun Thursday night “in response to the recent airstrikes carried out by Pakistani forces” in eastern Afghanistan.
“In response to the repeated rebellions and insurrections of the Pakistani military, large-scale offensive operations were launched against Pakistani military bases and military installations along the Durand Line,” Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a post on X Thursday night.
The two countries’ 2,611-kilometre long border is known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognised.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said the retaliatory attacks were occurring along the border in five provinces, and said 17 Pakistani army posts had been captured and 40 soldiers killed, with the bodies of 13 taken into Afghanistan.
Mujahid, the government spokesman, said in a post on X that some Pakistani soldiers had been captured alive. There was no official response from Pakistan on the claims of casualties or of soldiers being captured.
In Pakistan, spokesman Mosharraf Ali Zaidi for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denied that any Pakistani soldiers had been killed or captured, and that any Pakistani posts had been captured or damaged. He said Pakistani forces had instead inflicted heavy losses along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in response to what he said were unprovoked Taliban attacks.
“As of right now, there have been no Pakistani soldiers captured, nor any Pakistani soldiers martyred. Any claims of damage to Pakistan thus far are little more than the fantasy of India’s proxies in Afghanistan,” Zaidi said.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in a post on X that Afghanistan had opened “unprovoked fire” at multiple locations along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and that the action was being met with an “immediate and effective response” from Pakistan’s security forces.
It said early reports indicated heavy casualties on the Afghan side and that multiple posts and pieces of equipment had been destroyed.
“Pakistan will take all necessary measures to ensure its territorial integrity and the safety and security of its citizens,” the statement said.
Afghanistan’s military released video footage of military vehicles moving at night, and the sound of heavy gunfire. The video could not be independently verified.
Tension has been high between the two neighbours for months, with deadly border clashes in October killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. The violence followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad, at the time, conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to target militant hideouts.
A Qatari-mediated ceasefire between the two countries has largely held, but the two sides have still occasionally traded fire across the border. Several rounds of peace talks in November failed to produce a formal agreement.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s military carried out strikes along the border with Afghanistan, saying it had killed at least 70 militants.
Afghanistan rejected the claim, saying dozens of civilians had been killed, including women and children. The Defence Ministry said “various civilian areas” in eastern Afghanistan had been hit, including a religious madrassa and several homes. The ministry said the strikes were a violation of Afghanistan’s airspace and sovereignty.
Hours before Thursday’s border clashes erupted, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi defended the military’s early Sunday strikes on what he described as training camps of the Pakistani Taliban along the Afghan border.
At a weekly news conference in Islamabad on Thursday, he said those “precision strikes were carried out” in response to recent militant attacks in Pakistan. Andrabi said Pakistan “remains cognizant of the threats that emanate from Afghanistan.”
He said attacks inside Pakistan, which he blamed on “Khawarij,” a term the government uses for the Pakistani Taliban, have increased over the past year.
“We have nothing against the people of Afghanistan,” Andrabi said.
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan in recent years, much of which Pakistan blames on the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Islamabad accuses the TTP of operating from inside Afghanistan, a charge both the group and Kabul deny.
