Pakistan Strikes Two Sites in Afghanistan, Kabul Says Nine Civilians Killed

Pakistan's information ministry said on Thursday that the armed forces carried out well-planned and calibrated air strikes at two locations against what it called terrorist hideouts inside Afghanistan, describing the action as a continuation of Operation Ghazab lil Haq. The ministry later said the strikes, based on what it called credible intelligence, killed at least 22 fighters from two armed groups, the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and destroyed stored weapons and ammunition at the targeted camps.

The Taliban government gave a different account. Its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the strikes destroyed three houses in Kunar and Helmand provinces and killed nine people, all of them women and children, with eleven injured, and condemned the action as aggression in violation of accepted principles. The exchange follows strikes on 21 September in Kunar and Paktika that Pakistan said targeted militant camps and that killed at least twenty-eight people, after an attack on a police station in Pakistan.

The civilian relationship is deteriorating in parallel. The Islamabad High Court this week disposed of a petition from 87 Afghan students seeking extensions of their study visas, converting it into a representation that the interior ministry must decide within thirty days.

Neither side disputes that the strikes happened. They disagree on who was hit and how many died, and that disagreement is the recurring feature of this border conflict, where Pakistan claims it is acting against the Pakistani Taliban and the Balochistan Liberation Army, and Kabul claims the casualties are civilians.