Pakistan Strikes Ten Sites in Afghanistan and Says It Was Answering Drone Attacks

Pakistan carried out aerial and drone strikes at ten locations across Afghanistan's Kandahar, Paktia and Khost provinces in the early hours of Thursday. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the operation was a response to drones launched from Afghan territory a day earlier and that Pakistan acted in exercise of its sovereign right. Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesman for the Taliban government, said the strikes killed four civilians and warned that Pakistan's actions would be met with an appropriate response. Pakistan has not confirmed a casualty figure for Thursday's strikes, and the claim has not been independently verified.

The accounts of earlier raids this month also diverge sharply. Pakistan said air strikes on 21 September killed at least 28 fighters in the border region. Taliban officials said the same strikes killed three civilians. Pakistan traces the escalation to an attack on a police facility in the Kohat district that killed at least 24 people. Neither government's casualty claims, from this month's earlier raids or from Thursday's strikes, have been independently verified.

The exchange has broken a period of relative calm along a border that carries a large share of Afghanistan's trade with the outside world. Afghanistan is landlocked and depends on Pakistani roads and the port of Karachi for imports, so each round of strikes and closures raises the delivered cost of goods in Afghan markets and reduces transit revenue on the Pakistani side.

Pakistan is conducting this campaign while presenting itself as a mediator elsewhere. Dawn reported that Islamabad is pushing to broker dialogue between Washington and Tehran, with a meeting expected between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the United Nations. A state that strikes one neighbour while offering to mediate between two other governments is asserting a regional role that does not depend on an outside guarantor.