Pakistan Bombs Afghan Border Provinces, Killing Dozens in Fresh Escalation

Pakistan carried out airstrikes and deployed ground forces into Afghan border provinces on Sunday, triggering a fresh and deadly escalation between the two neighbouring countries. Afghanistan's Taliban government says the attacks killed at least 36 civilians — among them women and children — and left more than 160 others wounded.

Kabul has condemned the strikes in the strongest terms, describing them as a "cowardly act" and "a crime and atrocity." The heaviest casualties were reported in Mandokhail, a village in Paktika province, with the strikes also hitting Paktia and Kunar provinces along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, however, offered a different account, insisting that 29 militants were killed in targeted operations against terror hideouts. He said the strikes were a direct response to "recent terrorist attacks against innocent people" on Pakistani soil — a justification Islamabad has repeatedly used to defend similar operations in the past.

The latest strikes came just one day after a suicide attack at the headquarters of the Sindh Rangers, a Pakistani paramilitary force in Karachi, killed three of its members. Pakistani authorities said a fourth attacker, described as an Afghan national, was arrested. The militant group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar — a breakaway faction of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — claimed responsibility for that assault.

Relations between Islamabad and Kabul have been strained for years, with Pakistan accusing Afghanistan of sheltering terror groups responsible for cross-border attacks, while the Taliban government rejects those claims and accuses Pakistan of targeting civilians. A ceasefire brokered last October has since collapsed. In March, a Pakistani strike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul was reported to have killed hundreds, and earlier in June, Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 26 people, with the Taliban saying 13 of the dead were mostly children.

The United Nations has not independently verified the latest casualty figures, and the BBC says it has been unable to confirm the numbers put forward by either side. The cycle of retaliatory strikes and border clashes shows no sign of abating, raising concerns among international observers about a broader and more devastating conflict between the two nations.