Image: MOHSIN KARIMI (AFP)
According to the Islamist Taliban ruling Afghanistan, the fighting stopped again on Tuesday. According to the Afghan Defense Ministry, Afghan border troops fired “heavy weapons” at Pakistani military posts along the border in retaliation for the airstrike.
Both sides also reported cross-border skirmishes. A senior police officer in the Pakistani border district of Kurram told the AFP news agency that Afghan security forces had attacked the area with mortar shells. Three security posts and five houses were partially damaged and nine people, including four security guards, were injured. “Today there is calm at the border and security forces have reinforced their positions,” the official added.
According to the Taliban, eight people were killed in Pakistani air strikes on Monday night. Pakistani fighter jets attacked residential buildings in the border provinces of Khost and Paktika around 3 a.m. (Sunday, 11 p.m. CET). All the dead were women and children. The Taliban spoke of an “attack on the sovereignty of Afghanistan.” A spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan also declared the skirmishes over on Tuesday. “The situation is calm, fighting has stopped,” Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP.
Since the Islamist Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, tensions with neighboring Pakistan have increased. The government in Islamabad accuses militant groups from Afghanistan of carrying out armed attacks in Pakistan.
A few days ago, five members of the security forces were killed in a suicide attack on a military post in northwest Pakistan. “The terrorists raced into the post in a vehicle loaded with explosives,” the Pakistani military said on Saturday. The building partially collapsed. Afterwards, several suicide bombers attacked. Residents of Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Reuters an explosion shook doors and shattered windows as the attack began.
TTP seeks to overthrow the government
Many of the attacks in Pakistan are attributed to the Pakistan Taliban (TTP). The government in Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of the extremists using the neighboring country as a starting point for the attacks. The Taliban ruling Afghanistan denies this. “Pakistan should not blame Afghanistan for the loss of control, incompetence and problems on its own territory,” said a Taliban spokesman on Monday.
The TTP seeks to overthrow the government and want to run Pakistan according to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. The Islamists have killed thousands of soldiers, police officers and civilians in bomb attacks and suicide attacks in recent years.
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Source: Nachrichten
