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Pakistan’s defence minister has said the country is in “open war” with Afghanistan, after Islamabad launched airstrikes on Kabul as part of a wave of attacks across the country.
“Our patience has now run out,” said Khawaja Muhammad Asif following the attacks.
The strikes came after the Afghan Taliban announced a major offensive against Pakistani military posts near the border on Thursday night.
The latest attacks follow months of clashes between the two neighbouring nations, despite agreeing to a fragile ceasefire in October.
Last year’s negotiations failed to reach a broader agreement for a complete end to hostilities, with both side blaming each other for not engaging seriously with talks.
The Taliban said a “retaliatory operation” had been launched at around 20:00 local time (15:30 GMT) on Thursday.
It said it had captured 19 Pakistani military posts and two bases, adding that 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed. The BBC has not been able to verify these claims.
Pakistan quickly retaliated, saying the Taliban had “miscalculated and opened unprovoked fire on multiple locations” across the border in its north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which had been met with an “immediate and effective response” by Islamabad’s security forces.
It then launched a series of bombing raids on Afghanistan in the early hours of Friday morning, striking targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktika in response to what they called “unprovoked Afghan attacks”.
All three cities are close to the shared Pakistani-Afghan mountainous border that spans 2,600 km (1,615 miles).
Pakistan’s military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said it had hit 22 Afghan military targets and killed more that 200 Taliban fighters. At least 12 Pakistani soldiers had died, he added.
But the Taliban’s spokesman Mujahid said just 13 Taliban fighters had been killed and 22 others injured, while 13 civilians had been injured and an indeterminate number killed.
The BBC has not been able to verify these numbers. During these hostilities, both sides have claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the other while suffering little damage to their own.
In response to the strikes, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Afghan Taliban spokesman, published – then subsequently deleted – a post on X that the group had launched strikes early on Friday on Pakistani military positions in Kandahar and Helmand, two provinces in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban has said it carried out air strikes on several targets within Pakistan, on Friday morning. Sources in the Taliban government told the BBC these were with drones launched from Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Atta Tarar said its military thwarted Afghan drones targeting Swabi, Nowshera and Abbottabad, which is a military garrison city housing the army’s military academy.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his country’s forces had “the full capability to crush any aggressive ambitions”, vowing that there would be “no compromise” in defending their “beloved homeland”.
In Afghanistan, Taliban officials on Friday claimed Pakistani rockets hit a refugee camp in Nangarhar – housing Afghan citizens recently arrived from Pakistan – and injured at least nine people. The BBC has not been able to verify this.
Residents and local officials in the Afghan cities hit told BBC Afghan the situation appeared to have calmed down since the attacks, although people on both sides of the border remained on high alert.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has spoken to his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, the ministry said, and “agreed to stay closely engaged on evolving developments” as they both stressed the “importance of peace and stability”.
Dar, who is in Saudi Arabia for an official visit, also held a similar conversation with the country’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.
Meanwhile, Iran has offered to “facilitate dialogue” between Pakistan and Afghanistan as it urged them to “resolve their differences through good neighbourliness and dialogue”.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also urged the two sides to re-engage in talks, take “immediate steps toward de‑escalation [and] avoid further harm to civilians”.
While a fragile ceasefire between the two countries was agreed in October, negotiations failed to reach a broader agreement for a complete end to hostilities, with both side blaming the other for not engaging seriously with talks.
Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of supporting “anti-Pakistan terrorists”, who it blames for carrying out suicide attacks in the country, including at a mosque in the capital recently.
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