SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Pakistan air strikes kill 46 in Afghanistan: Taliban spokesman
Kabul, Dec 25 (AFP) Dec 25, 2024
Pakistan air strikes in an eastern border province of Afghanistan killed 46 people, the Taliban government spokesman told AFP on Wednesday, as the defence ministry vowed retaliation.

The strikes were the latest spike in hostilities on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with border tensions between the two countries escalating since the Taliban government seized power in 2021.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said late Tuesday, Pakistan bombarded four areas in the Barmal district of eastern Paktika province.

"The total number of dead is 46, most of whom were children and women," he said, adding that six more people were wounded, mostly children.

A defence ministry statement late Tuesday condemned the strikes, calling them "barbaric" and a "clear aggression".

"The Islamic Emirate will not leave this cowardly act unanswered, but rather considers the defence of its territory and sovereignty to be its inalienable right," the statement said, using the Taliban authorities' name for the government.

Skirmishes on the frontier followed deadly air strikes in March by Pakistan's military in the border regions of Afghanistan, which Taliban authorities said killed eight civilians.

A Barmal resident, Maleel, told AFP Tuesday's strikes killed 18 members of one family.

"The bombardment hit two or three houses, in one house, 18 people were killed, the whole family lost their lives," he said.

He said a strike killed three people in another house and wounded several others, who were taken to hospital.

Taliban officials said the dead were local residents and people who had fled over the Pakistan border from Waziristan.

North Waziristan, which borders Paktika, has historically been a hive of militancy and was the target of a long-running Pakistani military offensive and US drone strikes during the post-9/11 occupation of Afghanistan.

The strike comes after the Pakistani Taliban -- who are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and share a common ideology with their Afghan counterparts -- last week claimed a raid on an army outpost near the border with Afghanistan, which Pakistani intelligence officials said killed 16 soldiers.

Pakistan has been battling a resurgence of militant violence in its western border regions since the Taliban's 2021 return to power in Afghanistan.

Islamabad has accused Kabul's Taliban authorities of harbouring militant fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity.

Kabul has denied the allegations and pledged to evict foreign militant groups from Afghan soil.

But a UN Security Council report in July estimated up to 6,500 TTP fighters are based there -- and said "the Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group".

The spike in attacks has soured Islamabad-Kabul relations. Security was cited as one reason for Pakistan's campaign last year to evict hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghan migrants.

There has been no official comment from Pakistani authorities on the latest strike in Afghan territory.

Earlier Tuesday, high-level Taliban officials were meeting with Pakistan's special envoy for Afghanistan who was on a visit to Kabul.

burs-qb-sw/mtp


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
UK opens competitive bid for GBP 75 million orbital cleanup mission
UK invests $191 mn in European satellite firm Eutelsat
Bearings Used in Space Technologies: Engineering for the Final Frontier

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Atomic 6 receives 2M Space Force award to advance next generation solar arrays
ESA and Neuraspace develop autonomous satellite navigation technologies
Planet secures 240 million euro satellite services contract with German government

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
London, Paris tighten nuclear bond over US, Russia concerns
Iran says cooperation with UN nuclear watchdog will take 'new form'
Six killed in massive Russian drone, missile attack across Ukraine

24/7 News Coverage
Ancient zircon data reveals tectonic origin of Earth's first continental crust
Autonomous sub explores unexplored trench depths to reveal critical mineral clues
Europe launches first geostationary atmospheric sounder to boost extreme weather forecasts



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.