ISLAMABAD — Pakistani and Afghan forces launched multiple strikes at each other in cross-border clashes on Friday, and each side claimed to have killed dozens more enemy troops in what has been the deadliest fighting yet between the two neighbors — a conflict that Islamabad has declared to be an “open war.”
Repeated appeals from the international community for restraint have had no effect as the fighting, now in its ninth day, continued unabated.
Also on Friday, a suicide car bomber struck a security post in the district of North Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan. One civilian was killed and 18 were wounded, several of them seriously, a local doctor, Mohammad Asif, said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility but suspicion was likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who often target Pakistani forces and civilians in the region.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban-run government’s Defense Ministry said Friday its forces “destroyed numerous Pakistani military posts” along the border in Nangarhar, Kandahar, Kunar, Paktia, and Khost provinces, killing dozens of Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistani state-run media said the country’s air force and ground troops inflicted heavy losses in their latest strikes targeting Afghan forces and the Pakistani Taliban — also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. Islamabad said the fighting is ongoing and that the military “inflicted heavy losses” on Afghanistan, without elaborating.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban government in Afghanistan’s capital of harboring the TTP, a charge Kabul denies. Since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the TTP has stepped up its attacks within Pakistan.
Islamabad says its military operations, which started last week, will continue until Afghanistan takes verifiable steps to rein in the TTP and other militants operating from its territory.
The U.N. refugee agency said in a statement Thursday that the Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes have so far displaced about 115,000 people in Afghanistan and around 3,000 people in Pakistan.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan has urged for a halt in the fighting, saying it’s worsening Afghanistan’s already grave humanitarian situation. The mission, known as UNAMA, said Friday on X that so far, 56 civilians have been killed inside Afghanistan.
Several people were injured Friday when Afghan mortar shells landed in a village in Mohmand, a district in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local official Mohammad Asif said.
Casualty claims have varied widely. This week, Afghanistan said its forces had killed 150 Pakistani soldiers since the fighting began, while 28 Afghan troops were killed. On Friday, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on X that Pakistan’s military has killed 527 Afghan soldiers.
The border region, where militant such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State are also active, is largely inaccessible to the media and The Associated Press could not independently verify the conflicting claims.
It remains unclear whether efforts by other Muslim nations will get Kabul and Islamabad to the negotiating table anytime soon.
On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to mediate a new ceasefire in a call with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
And a day later, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim spoke with Afghanistan’s Prime Minister Mullah Mohammad Hasan Akhund, according to the Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
The ongoing clashes ended an earlier ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey in October, when the two neighbors had again come close to a war. The truce, signed in Qatar at the time, was followed by six days of talks in Istanbul, which resulted in an agreement to extend the truce and hold a third round of negotiations in November.
Ahmed and Afghan write for the Associated Press. Afghan reported from Kabul. AP writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
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