Overnight airstrikes by Pakistani forces have killed at least 36 civilians and injured more than 160 others, Afghan officials said, as tensions between the neighbours further escalated.
Pakistani security forces carried out a ground operation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border late Sunday, followed by strikes against militant hideouts and safe havens, killing 29 fighters, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said yesterday.
They said the operations were launched in response to multiple militant attacks across Pakistan.
Afghanistan condemned the strikes as a “cowardly act of aggression” and an “act of brutality”.
Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, said the Pakistani forces targeted a home in Chamkani district, in Paktia province, killing an elderly man and a child, while other family members were injured.
When residents gathered to rescue people, the area was struck again, killing 28 villagers and wounding 158, he said.
Six people, mostly women and children, were killed in a village in Giyan district, Paktika province, when another home was struck, he said. A civilian home in Kunar province was also hit, causing no casualties but killing some 30 livestock.
Authorities have blamed the Pakistani Taliban – known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP – and allied militant groups for most of the recent surge in violence.
Sunday’s cross-border strikes and ground operation came less than three weeks after Pakistan’s military launched airstrikes on what it said were militant hideouts in Afghanistan.
They ended about a month of relative calm following what Islamabad had described as an “open war” between the neighbouring countries, despite international efforts to broker lasting peace. — AP
