Pakistan Launches Strikes on Afghan Militant Hideouts
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- Pakistan launched a ground operation and airstrikes along its border with Afghanistan on Sunday in response to 'recent multiple terrorist incidents inside Pakistan,' Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced.
- Tarar said at least 29 militants were killed, including a senior commander, and posted a blurred but graphic image purportedly showing the commander's body.
- Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said airstrikes hit Paktika, Paktia, and Kunar provinces, condemning the action as a 'cowardly act of aggression' and an 'act of brutality.'
- Deputy Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat reported 36 civilians killed and 163 injured, alleging Pakistani forces struck twice in Paktia's Chamkani district — first killing an elderly man and child, then hitting arriving rescuers and killing 28 villagers.
- Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for a bomb and gun attack in Karachi the day before that killed three paramilitary troops.
- Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of harboring militants who carry out attacks inside Pakistan — a charge the Taliban deny — as ties between the two countries have 'spiraled into deadly armed conflict in recent months.'
Why it matters: Pakistan frames the strikes as calibrated counterterrorism, but the Taliban's civilian casualty claims — including reports of rescuers being hit in follow-up strikes — widen the credibility gap between the two sides. That gap fuels the very cross-border spiral of armed conflict that Islamabad blames on Taliban's failure to suppress militants on Afghan soil.
