A Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and seven others were injured in cross-border firing with Afghan forces, a security source said on Saturday, while hundreds of Afghans protested against deadly air strikes, leading to clashes.
Sporadic fighting, including with heavy weapons, broke out overnight between border forces along the border between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan and Khost province in Afghanistan, officials from both countries said.
The firing came after Afghan Taliban officials accused Pakistan of killing 46 people, mainly women and children, in air strikes near the border in the southeastern province of Paktika this week.
A senior Pakistani security source said they targeted “terrorist hideouts”, although Islamabad has not officially confirmed the bombings.
“One Frontier Corps (FC) soldier was reported killed, and seven others were injured,” a senior security source at the border told AFP. He said clashes broke out at at least two places in Pakistan’s border district of Kurram.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said on Friday that “several points” across the border with Pakistan where “attacks were conducted in Afghanistan… were targeted in retaliation”.
A provincial official in Khost told AFP that the clashes had forced residents to flee border areas, but there were no reports of casualties among Afghan forces.
Hundreds of Afghans demonstrated against Pakistan on Saturday in the provincial capital Khost city and demanded accountability for civilian deaths.
Protester Najibullah Zeland said he called for global economic pressure on Pakistan to stop such incidents.
“We have gathered here today to raise our voices to the world,” he told AFP.
“A path to peace must be found, otherwise the youth will not remain silent.”
Protesters praised Afghan forces, with one protester, Rashidullah Hamdard, saying, “Our fighters gave them a strong response, and we stand with our forces”.
Hamdard said, “We demand the world hold the Pakistan Army accountable for these brutal and senseless attacks.”
– ‘Red Line’ –
The attacks were the latest escalation in border hostilities between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with border tensions between the two countries rising since the Taliban seized power in 2021.
Islamabad has accused Kabul authorities of harboring terrorist fighters, allowing them to carry out attacks on Pakistani soil with impunity – allegations the Taliban government denies.
Border clashes escalated after Pakistan’s military carried out deadly airstrikes in border areas with Afghanistan in March, which Taliban officials claimed killed eight civilians.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, called for an investigation into “credible reports” of civilian deaths, as the UN children’s agency UNICEF said that “children should never and must never be targeted”. “.
“UNICEF is deeply saddened by reports that at least 20 children have been killed in an attack near the border in eastern Afghanistan,” regional director Sanjay Wijesekera posted on Twitter.
The attack comes after Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – which shares a similar ideology with its Afghan counterparts – last week claimed an attack on an army post near the border with Afghanistan, in which Pakistan Had said that 16 soldiers were killed.
“We want good relations with them (Kabul) but TTP should be stopped from killing our innocent people,” Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a cabinet address on Friday.
“This is our red line,” he said.
Pakistan has been grappling with the resurgence of terrorist violence in its western border areas since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
In 2024 alone, the Army has reported the killing of 383 soldiers and 925 terrorists in various clashes.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
