Pakistan's military said its forces killed 29 militants in a ground operation and "precision strikes" along the border with Afghanistan, in an operation it described as a response to a recent wave of attacks, Al Jazeera reported.
What Pakistan said
Pakistani officials said the operation targeted hideouts and safe havens of the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with strikes hitting targets in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar, according to PBS, citing officials. The military gave the death toll as 29 fighters. It did not release detailed evidence of the strikes, and as with most such cross-border claims, the account could not be independently verified.
The trigger
The operation came a day after gunmen armed with explosives attacked the regional headquarters of Pakistan's paramilitary Rangers in the southern port city of Karachi, killing three soldiers, the military said. Pakistan has faced a surge of militant violence in recent months, much of it blamed on the TTP, and officials cast the border operation as retaliation intended to disrupt the group's ability to stage such attacks from across the frontier.
A widening confrontation
The strikes are the latest in an increasingly bloody back-and-forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan's Taliban authorities. Since February, cross-border military action has killed hundreds of people, by various accounts, after Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes in response to earlier Pakistani operations inside Afghan territory. Islamabad accuses Kabul of allowing the TTP and allied fighters to operate from Afghan soil; the Taliban government denies sheltering the group and has condemned past Pakistani strikes as violations of its sovereignty that endanger civilians.
What's at stake
The relationship between the two neighbors — Pakistan was among the first countries to deal with the Taliban after it returned to power in 2021 — has deteriorated sharply over the militant question. There was no immediate official Afghan response to the latest operation. Each new exchange raises the risk of a wider conflict along a long, rugged and porous border, and deepens a humanitarian and security crisis that has already driven mass displacement and repeated rounds of retaliation. This is a developing story and will be updated as the two governments and independent monitors provide more detail.
