Pakistan targets militant hideouts in Afghanistan as conflict continues

Pakistan has targeted militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province overnight, as the fighting that erupted between the two neighbours late last month showed no signs of abating.

The cross-border attacks, which have included Pakistani airstrikes in the Afghan capital, Kabul, is the deadliest yet between the countries. Islamabad has referred to the conflict as an “open war”, adding to concerns about regional stability as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran engulfs the Middle East and beyond.

In a post on X, Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the military had struck equipment storage facilities and “technical support infrastructure” in the attacks.

The Afghan government said one of the buildings destroyed was used by its security guards. Photograph: Qudratullah Razwan/EPA

The Afghan government spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Pakistan had hit two locations: a site used by security guards during the day that was empty at night and a drug rehabilitation centre that suffered slight damage. He said there were no casualties, but that the strikes showed Pakistan was “continuing to invade and fuel the fire of war”.

Afghanistan’s defence ministry said it carried out an attack on an army camp in Pakistan’s South Waziristan area on Sunday in retaliation for the strikes in Kandahar. It claimed the attack destroyed most of the camp’s command centre and other facilities, and inflicted heavy casualties on the Pakistani military.

Pakistan’s information ministry rejected the claim as “propaganda”, saying that a small drone was struck down and that “no military installation or infrastructure was hit”.

Afghanistan also said it carried out operations inside Pakistan across the border from Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, claiming to have captured a Pakistani military outpost and killed several soldiers. Pakistan also rejected those claims.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers of harbouring militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban, which has staged attacks in Pakistan. Afghanistan denies the charge, insisting it does not allow its territory to be used against other countries.

The latest fighting erupted in late February, when Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack into Pakistan in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan days earlier that it said had killed only civilians. The clashes upended a ceasefire that had been brokered by Qatar last October after fighting that had killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.

On Sunday, a mortar fired from Afghanistan destroyed a home in Bajaur, a district in northwestern Pakistan, killing at last four members of the same family and wounding two others, the local government official Adnan Khan said.

Both sides have accused the other of targeting civilians and dozens have been killed. Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, on Saturday said Afghanistan’s government had “crossed a red line” by launching drone attacks on civilian areas in Pakistan, and hours later the country reportedly conducted strikes on an Afghan drone storage facility.