A round of Pakistani strikes on Afghanistan has produced two irreconcilable accounts of what happened — and who died. Pakistan says it killed militants; Afghanistan's Taliban government says the dead were overwhelmingly civilians, as reported by NBC News.
Pakistan's account
Pakistani officials said security forces carried out a ground operation along the border and "precision strikes" on hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar, killing 29 fighters in all. They described the operation as retaliation for a wave of militant attacks inside Pakistan — including an assault on a paramilitary Rangers compound in Karachi over the weekend that killed several soldiers, claimed by a TTP faction. Islamabad has long accused the Taliban government of letting the TTP operate from Afghan soil, a charge Kabul denies.
Afghanistan's account
Kabul's account is dramatically different — and far grimmer. Afghan officials said the strikes killed at least 36 civilians and wounded more than 160, according to the Associated Press as carried by ABC News. They described a strike on a home in the Chamkani district of Paktia that killed an elderly man and a child; when neighbors rushed to help, officials said, a second strike hit the same spot, killing more than two dozen people who had gathered to dig out survivors. Further deaths were reported in Paktika province. The Taliban government condemned the attack as a "cowardly act of aggression" and warned that it would respond, as Al Jazeera reported.
A conflict spiraling
The strikes are the latest in a sharply escalating confrontation. Since February, repeated rounds of cross-border fire between the two neighbors have killed hundreds of people, by various accounts, and several attempts at a lasting ceasefire have failed. Each side blames the other: Pakistan says it is targeting militants who attack it from across a porous frontier; the Taliban says Pakistani strikes are killing ordinary Afghans and violating its sovereignty.
Why the truth is hard to pin down
The chasm between "29 militants" and "36 civilians" is not just arithmetic — it is a fundamental dispute over who was hit. Independent verification is nearly impossible: the strikes fall in remote border districts that outside monitors and journalists cannot freely reach, and each government controls the flow of information from its side. What is not in doubt is that the violence is intensifying, that civilians are increasingly caught in it, and that the prospects for calm between Islamabad and Kabul look more remote with each exchange. This is a developing story.
