Pakistani military airstrikes have killed at least 47 civilians in the eastern Afghanistan districts of Khost and Kunar. ‘Forty-one people, including women and children, were murdered and 22 others were injured in airstrikes by Pakistani forces near the Durand line in Khost province,’ Shabir Ahmad Osmani, director of information and culture in Khost, said AFP.
According to a statement issued by Pakistan’s foreign ministry on Sunday, ‘In recent days, events along the Pakistan-Afghan border have intensified dramatically, with Pakistani security personnel being attacked from across the border. Unfortunately, components of banned terrorist organizations operating in the border region, particularly the TTP, have continued to target Pakistan’s border security stations, resulting in the death of numerous Pakistani personnel’, it added.
It has urged Taliban authorities to take action against militants operating on Afghan territory. The announcement comes a day after the Pakistani military claimed responsibility for the deaths of six Afghans in suspected rocket assaults. These included five children and a lady from Kunar, Afghanistan’s easternmost province. In response to the strikes, Taliban officials summoned Pakistan’s envoy to Kabul. Pakistan claimed in its defense that the assaults were carried out ‘with impunity’. It said that they were the consequence of Afghan authorities’ failure to control insurgents.
The Taliban denied these assertions, claiming that they had controlled cross-border assaults since taking over Afghanistan in August of last year. ‘UNAMA is profoundly concerned about reports of civilian fatalities, including women and children, as a result of airstrikes in Khost and Kunar provinces,’ the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan stated (UNAMA). Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a Pashtun Islamist armed terrorist organization centered on Pakistan’s Afghan border. Its philosophy is comparable to the Afghan Taliban’s.
According to Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban leadership, ‘This is terrible, and it is preparing the road for conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani side should understand that if a conflict breaks out, it will be in no one’s best interests. The defeat of the US eight months ago should serve as a warning to aggressors who seek to insult Afghanistan’s land and independence’, he said. In the midst of escalating tensions between the neighbors, Islamabad is constructing a barrier along its 2,700-kilometer (1,600-mile) border. This has outraged Taliban officials.
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