Pakistan launched airstrikes against militant targets in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, claiming to have killed at least 28 fighters, according to the Pakistani Information Ministry. The Taliban government in Kabul rejected that account, saying the strikes hit a residential area and killed only three people — all civilians from the same family.
The operation was the first time Pakistan has bombed inside Afghanistan since June, and it drew an immediate and angry response from the Taliban, which accused Islamabad of violating Afghan sovereignty. The competing casualty figures set up a familiar dispute between the two neighbors, whose relationship has deteriorated sharply over cross-border militant activity.
Pakistan described the strikes as part of an “intelligence-driven” campaign that involved ground forces identifying targets before warplanes moved in. According to its Information Ministry, three locations were destroyed, including a site used to train suicide bombers. The ministry said nine fighters from what it called an “Indian proxy” were killed, along with twenty-eight terrorists and multiple would-be suicide bombers. Large stocks of weapons and ammunition stored at the sites were also destroyed, the statement said.
Pakistani officials have long accused regional rival India of colluding with militants operating along the Afghan border, a charge India has consistently denied. The Information Ministry used the derogatory term “khwarij” — meaning savages or barbarians — to describe the fighters it said were killed.
A Weekend of Bloodshed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
The airstrikes followed a violent weekend in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. On Friday, a group linked to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing and gun attack on a mosque and a police station. By Sunday, the death toll from that assault had reached 31, with more than 100 people injured.
TTP is dedicated to overthrowing the Pakistani government and replacing it with an Islamic “caliphate” modeled on the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban of sheltering TTP fighters and allowing them to operate from safe havens in the border region between the two countries — allegations Kabul denies.
On Sunday, four Pakistani security personnel and two military officers were killed in a shootout with militants elsewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The airstrikes into Afghanistan came a few hours later.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry said its action was a direct response to the mosque attack, which it blamed on militants based inside Afghanistan. Islamabad warned that it would keep taking action unless Kabul adopted what it called “credible, verifiable, and sustained measures” to dismantle terrorist groups on Afghan soil.
“It is a matter of grave concern that Afghanistan continues to remain a hub of terrorism,” the ministry said in its statement. “The threat to Pakistan emanates from Afghanistan. In this context, our action precisely targeted the terrorist hubs.”
Pakistani officials said the strikes specifically targeted camps belonging to TTP and one of its allied factions, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
Taliban Rejects Allegations and Threatens Response
The Taliban government offered a sharply different version of events. Its foreign ministry said the strikes hit several empty buildings in a residential area along with one occupied home, killing three members of a single family. It called the operation “a clear violation of Afghanistan’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity” and condemned it “in the strongest terms.”
The Taliban also rejected Pakistan’s core justification for the operation, denying that recent attacks in Pakistan were launched from Afghan territory. “The Islamic Emirate once again categorically rejects allegations that recent security incidents in Pakistan originate from Afghan soil,” the foreign ministry said.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid went further, accusing Pakistani military leaders of using the strikes to distract from their own domestic problems. “Pakistani military circles have once again committed such a crime to divert attention from their country’s security failures,” Mujahid said. “The Afghans will give a fitting response to this, God willing.”
The exchange marks another low point in relations between Islamabad and the Taliban authorities in Kabul, who have clashed repeatedly over border security and the presence of armed groups in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces. Pakistan’s decision to strike inside Afghan territory — and the dueling death tolls that followed — is likely to deepen that rift, with neither side showing signs of backing down from its account of what happened.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2026/09/21/taliban-protests-as-pakistan-bombs-afghanistan-again/