ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Taliban accusations that its forces carried out overnight airstrikes inside Afghanistan’s Khost province, after an explosion killed 10 civilians, including nine children.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the raid “martyred” the victims and claimed the target was “the house of a local civilian resident.” He publicly blamed Pakistan for the attack in a statement posted on X. Islamabad flatly denied the allegation.
Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, head of Pakistan military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, during an interaction with senior journalists said, “Pakistan has not attacked Afghanistan.”
He emphasized that “whenever Pakistan conducts any operation, it announces it formally,” underscoring that the country “never attacks civilians.”
The latest charge has deepened tensions already heightened since two powerful explosions struck central Kabul on October 9. The Kabul incident triggered a week of cross-border hostilities that resulted in a 48-hour ceasefire brokered in Doha, with follow-up diplomacy in Türkiye.
Pakistani officials maintain the truce was contingent on a “concrete and verifiable monitoring mechanism” to ensure Afghan territory is not used to stage attacks against its forces or civilians.
Lt. Gen. Chaudhry reiterated that Pakistan’s conflict is with militant networks, not the Afghan population.
“Our policy is against terrorism, not against the Afghan people,” he said. “Our issue is with the Afghan interim government, not with Afghanistan’s people.”
Security officials described the militants operating from Afghan soil as the Fitna al-Khawarij network, Islamabad’s term for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), invoking the historic extremist sect synonymous with rebellion and violent upheaval.
According to ISPR, since November 4, Pakistani forces have killed 206 militants in operations across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
Lt. Gen. Chaudhry noted that “all suicide bombers are Afghan,” warning that “terrorists will be pursued until their last breath.”
He urged the Taliban regime to act decisively against cross-border militancy. “The Afghan regime must take verifiable action against terrorist hideouts,” he said, adding there would be no further talks “until verifiable action is taken.”
Efforts to engage Kabul have repeatedly stalled.
“From 2021 to 2025 we repeatedly engaged the Afghan government, but no result came,” Lt Gen Chaudhry said.
Stressing Pakistan’s posture as a responsible state actor, he added: “We are a state, and we respond as a state. Blood and business cannot run together, it cannot happen that we face attacks and simultaneously maintain trade.”
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