Pakistan has launched air strikes on Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and different cities, as clashes escalate alongside the 2 nations’ shared border.
On Friday, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated Islamabad’s persistence had run out with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, declaring that Pakistan will now wage “open struggle”.
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The declaration got here hours after Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stated Afghanistan was carrying out “large-scale offensive operations” towards the Pakistani navy alongside the Durand Line, which separates the 2 nations.
This follows weeks of preventing alongside the nations’ shared border, with either side claiming that dozens of people have been killed.
Hostilities are happening towards a backdrop of an escalation in tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities because the latter’s return to energy in 2021.
Here’s what we all know to this point:
What has occurred?
On Friday, Pakistani officers stated Afghan forces had attacked navy positions near the border, prompting Islamabad to launch air strikes on targets inside Afghanistan, together with within the capital, Kabul, and in different cities.
The primary Pakistani strike occurred at about 1:50am native time on Friday (21:20 GMT on Thursday), Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nasser Shadid reported, with Afghan forces responding with anti-aircraft hearth.
“Our cup of persistence has overflowed. Now it’s open struggle between us and also you,” Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated on X.
Pakistan referred to as this Operation Ghazab lil Haq, which interprets to “righteous fury”.
Which areas in Afghanistan have been hit by Pakistan?
Pakistan’s Info Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X that “Afghan Taliban defence targets” had been struck in Kabul, the southeastern Paktia province and southern Kandahar, whereas Defence Minister Khawaja Asif declared what he described as an “open struggle” with the Taliban authorities.
Afghan authorities spokesperson Mujahid additionally confirmed in an X publish that these three provinces had been hit.
The Related Press reported that the assaults had destroyed two brigade bases in Afghanistan, citing two senior Pakistani safety officers who spoke to the company on situation of anonymity as they weren’t authorised to talk to the media.
Pakistani state media outlet Pakistan TV claimed in a report that the nation’s forces had “destroyed” numerous Taliban places in just a few hours.
Based on the outlet, the places attacked in Afghanistan included a Taliban brigade headquarters and ammunition depot in Kandahar, in addition to Taliban posts within the Wali Khan sector, close to the Shawal sector, within the Bajaur sector and in Angoor Adda.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Info stated it was additionally focusing on Afghan Taliban forces in a number of districts of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province: Chitral, Khyber, Mohmand, Kurram and Bajaur.
Afterward Friday, gunfire and shelling had been reported close to the important thing Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, and the AFP information company reported that shelling had been heard close to the crossing within the morning.
AFP reported Afghan troopers had been heading in the direction of the frontier.
The Torkham crossing has remained open for Afghans returning en masse from Pakistan, regardless of the land border being largely shut since preventing between the neighbours in October.
What can we find out about casualties?
Experiences from either side are conflicting.
Mosharraf Zaidi, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s prime minister, wrote on X early on Friday that within the assault on Friday morning, 133 Afghan Taliban forces had been killed and greater than 200 had been wounded.
He added that 27 Afghan Taliban posts had been destroyed, and 9 had been captured. Greater than 80 “tanks, artillery items, and armed personnel carriers have been destroyed”, he wrote.
Pakistani information outlet Daybreak reported that two Pakistani navy personnel had died within the ongoing clashes.
Al Jazeera couldn’t independently confirm the casualty figures launched by Pakistan.
The Taliban authorities, nonetheless, stated solely eight Taliban fighters had been killed and 11 had been wounded.
Afghanistan stated its navy had launched its assault on Pakistani navy bases and outposts alongside the border early on Friday in retaliation towards Pakistani strikes throughout the Afghan border on Sunday. It claimed its forces had killed 55 Pakistani troopers, and captured two navy bases and 19 navy posts. Pakistan has dismissed this declare.
For its half, Pakistan stated its air strikes final Sunday killed at the least 70 “militants”, a declare dismissed by Mujahid, in accordance with information shops. Mujahid, as a substitute, wrote on X that the assaults “killed and wounded dozens, together with ladies and youngsters”.
The provincial director of the Afghan Crimson Crescent Society in Nangarhar province, Mawlawi Fazl Rahman Fayyaz, stated 18 individuals had been killed and several other others had been wounded on Sunday.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who doesn’t maintain an official place however stays an influential political determine, stated the nation “will defend their beloved homeland with full unity in all circumstances and can reply to aggression with braveness”.
“Pakistan can’t free itself from the violence and bombings – these issues it has created itself – however should change its personal coverage and select the trail of fine neighbourliness, respect, and civilised relations with Afghanistan,” he wrote in an X publish on Friday.
Why are Pakistan and Afghanistan preventing?
The present flare-up of violence between the 2 nations is the end result of months of pressure.
In October 2025, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to an immediate ceasefire throughout talks mediated by Qatar and Turkiye following every week of fierce and deadly clashes alongside their border.
The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is named the Durand Line and spans 2,611km (1,622 miles). Afghanistan doesn’t formally recognise this border, which it argues was an imposed colonial demarcation that illegitimately divided ethnic Pashtun areas between the 2 nations.
The neighbours have been embroiled in frequent clashes because the Taliban took over in 2021. Sami Omari, an skilled in South and Central Asian safety and strategic affairs, informed Al Jazeera there have been 75 clashes between Afghan and Pakistani forces since 2021 – the identical 12 months that US and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
Particularly, Pakistan needs the Taliban to rein in armed teams such because the Pakistan Taliban, identified by its acronym TTP, which it says Afghanistan is harbouring. The TTP emerged in Pakistan in 2007 and is separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan, however shares deep ideological, social and linguistic ties with the group.
Armed assaults in Pakistan by the TTP and the Balochistan Liberation Military (BLA), which operates within the resource-rich Balochistan province, have surged lately. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, which border Afghanistan, have borne the brunt of the violence.
“The Afghan Taliban, nonetheless, seem unwilling to noticeably crack down on the TTP, partly on account of prior affinities between the 2 teams but additionally out of worry of TTP militants defecting to its principal rival, the Islamic State Khorasan Province,” Pearl Pandya, South Asia senior analyst on the US-based Armed Battle Location & Occasion Knowledge (ACLED), an unbiased, neutral battle monitor, informed Al Jazeera.
Pandya added {that a} severe escalation is “inevitable” if the Taliban in Afghanistan don’t crack down on the TTP.
Elizabeth Threlkeld, director of the South Asia programme on the Stimson Middle assume tank in Washington, DC, informed Al Jazeera that the most recent clashes are usually not stunning, as they stem from months of “frayed” tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“It’s vital to the extent that it represents maybe a shift in technique,” Threlkeld stated, noting the “extra aggressive, kinetic assaults” from Pakistan.
“However since then, we’ve seen a few terrorist assaults inside Pakistan that had been fairly vital. So, no, I’m not shocked that after these cumulative assaults, that tensions have frayed and issues have once more gone on this route, sadly.”
How has the world reacted?
“India strongly condemns Pakistan’s air strikes on Afghan territory which have resulted in civilian casualties, together with ladies and youngsters, through the holy month of Ramadan,” India’s Ministry of Exterior Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
“It’s one other try by Pakistan to externalise its inside failures,” he said.
United Nations Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres has urged either side to stick to worldwide legislation, in accordance with a press release delivered by his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric.
Iran’s International Minister Abbas Araghchi has urged Afghanistan and Pakistan to resolve their variations by way of dialogue and good neighbourly rules.
“Within the blessed month of Ramadan, the month of self-restraint and strengthening solidarity on this planet of Islam, it’s becoming that Afghanistan and Pakistan handle and resolve their present variations inside the framework of fine neighborliness and thru the trail of dialogue,” Araghchi wrote in an X publish.
Russia has urged the opponents to halt cross-border assaults instantly and resolve their variations by way of diplomatic means, the RIA information company reported on Friday, citing the Ministry of International Affairs. Russia has additionally supplied to mediate.
