Pakistani military planes bombed Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province on Tuesday, killing at least 46 people, most of them children and women, the Afghan Taliban said it would retaliate.
Deputy spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said on Wednesday that six people were also injured in bomb blasts at four places in Afghanistan.
Pakistani government and military officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Afghanistan’s Foreign Office said it had called Pakistan’s chief of mission in Kabul to deliver a formal protest letter to Islamabad over the bombing by Pakistani military aircraft, warning the diplomat of the consequences of such actions.
“Afghanistan considers this brutal act a gross violation of all international principles and a clear act of aggression,” National Defense Ministry spokesman Inayatullah Khorazmi said in a statement. “The Islamic Emirate will not leave this cowardly act unanswered.”
A Pakistani official familiar with the matter, but speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Pakistan had carried out airstrikes against a camp of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) Islamic militant group.
The TTP owes allegiance to the Afghan Taliban and takes its name from the Afghan Taliban, but is not directly part of the group that rules Afghanistan. Its stated aim is to impose Islamic religious law in Pakistan, as the Taliban has done in Afghanistan.
Sixteen Pakistani security personnel were killed on Saturday in a major attack by TTP in Pakistan’s South Waziristan area, which borders the site of the alleged target camp in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry identified those killed in Pakistan’s bombing as “mostly Waziristan refugees” – indicating they were from the Waziristan region of Pakistan.
The neighbors have tense relations, with Pakistan saying that many of the TTP attacks in its country have been carried out from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
Their relationship became complicated in March when the Taliban accused Pakistan of carrying out two airstrikes on its territory, killing five women and children.
Pakistan said at the time that it had conducted an “intelligence-based counter-terrorism operation” in Afghanistan, but did not specify the nature of the operation.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
