Reuters, KABUL
Pakistani security forces killed at least 29 militants in ground and air operations along the Afghanistan border, Islamabad said yesterday, while the Afghan Taliban said at least 38 civilians were killed in airstrikes. Sunday’s aerial assault was Pakistan’s second on targets in Afghanistan it said belonged to militants, and threatened to exacerbate an intermittent conflict between the former allies, who in February fought their worst battle in years. Pakistan’s airstrikes on three targets in the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar killed 25 militants while destroying “large quantities” of weapons and ammunition, Pakistani Minister of Information and Broadcasting Tarar said on social media yesterday.
People look at the remains of a building damaged in a Pakistani airstrike at a village in Tsamkani, Afghanistan, yesterday.
Four more fighters linked to the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of Pakistan’s Taliban were killed in ground attacks in the Bajaur district of its northern border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, Afghan government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said the strikes killed 38 civilians and injured 163, including women and children.
The bulk of the casualties stemmed from Pakistani jets bombing a home in Paktia Province, killing 28 and injuring 158, he added. Residents were rushing to help the wounded when there was a second strike, said Khalid Ahmad Sajad, deputy head of the district of Samkani, hit in the airstrikes. “While they were carrying out rescue efforts, Pakistani military forces launched a second airstrike on the same location,” he told a news conference. Tarar said Pakistan was responding to “recent multiple terrorist incidents,” including Saturday’s Jamaat-ul-Ahrar bomb and gun attack on a Sindh Rangers facility in the southern city of Karachi that killed three and injured four of its troops. “Security forces precisely struck terrorist camps and safe havens,” he said in a social media message. Islamabad accuses Kabul of harboring militants it blames for plotting attacks in Pakistan. The Taliban denies the accusations, saying militancy is Pakistan’s internal problem.
