Pakistan's security forces have carried out a combination of airstrikes and ground operations targeting militant hideouts in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 29 fighters, Pakistani officials announced on Sunday night. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the strikes hit three targets in the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar — three eastern provinces bordering Pakistan — destroying camps belonging to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which the Pakistani state officially designates as Fitna al-Khawarij. An earlier ground operation in Bajaur district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killed four fighters, including a senior commander identified as Khan Farosh, also known as Zabal.
The Afghan Taliban government strongly rejected the strikes, with spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemning what he called a "cowardly act of aggression" and saying the operations killed or wounded dozens of civilians. Kabul has consistently denied that Afghan soil is used as a launchpad for attacks inside Pakistan, a charge Islamabad has pressed repeatedly since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021. The two sides have been locked in a cycle of escalating military action since February, when weeks of cross-border fighting killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands, according to the United Nations.
The latest operation was framed by Pakistani authorities as a direct response to a string of recent attacks inside Pakistan, including Saturday night's assault on a Pakistan Rangers facility in Karachi — Pakistan's largest city and main port — in which three security personnel were killed. The arrested attacker, identified as Usman Ali, told security forces he had been trained in Afghanistan and had travelled to Pakistan from Jalalabad roughly a week before the attack. JuA, which was formed in 2014 as a breakaway faction of the TTP and has its base in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack. The two groups formally merged in 2024.
Sunday's strikes are the second major cross-border operation in less than a month; earlier in June, Pakistani strikes killed 26 militants according to Islamabad. Multiple rounds of internationally mediated talks — involving China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey — have failed to produce a lasting ceasefire. China hosted a meeting between Pakistani and Afghan representatives in Urumqi in April, after which Beijing said both sides had agreed not to escalate, though the latest strikes suggest those commitments remain fragile.
The widening conflict raises serious concerns for regional stability. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan's Taliban administration of knowingly harbouring groups that carry out attacks against Pakistani civilians and security forces, while Afghan officials argue that Pakistani strikes have caused heavy civilian casualties, citing a March strike on what the UN described as a drug treatment centre in which hundreds were killed. With diplomatic channels showing limited results and the frontier largely closed since cross-border violence in October, analysts see little immediate prospect of a sustained de-escalation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours' shared border region.