Pakistan Says Afghan Taliban Shelled Border Posts; Kabul Denies Attack

Pakistani officials said Wednesday that Afghan Taliban forces shelled Pakistani border posts overnight, following what they described as a foiled cross-border infiltration attempt by militants. The spokesman for Afghanistan's Taliban government, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that Afghan Taliban forces carried out any attacks.

The conflicting statements came just days after Pakistani fighter jets struck sites in eastern Afghanistan that Islamabad said were militant hideouts — an escalation that threatens mediation efforts by China, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to broker a lasting peace between Kabul and Islamabad. The airstrikes ended several weeks of relative calm following months of cross-border hostilities. Earlier this month, Pakistani security forces killed 15 militants attempting to cross into the country from Afghanistan.

Four local Pakistani officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said militants attempted to infiltrate Pakistan from areas near Afghan border posts in Paktia and Nangarhar provinces, allegedly with support from Afghan Taliban forces. The officials referred to the militants as Fitna-ul-Khawarij, a term Islamabad uses for the Pakistani Taliban — a group separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan has repeatedly accused Afghanistan's Taliban government of allowing militants to operate from its territory and carry out attacks across the border, an accusation Kabul denies.

According to the officials, after Pakistani troops thwarted the infiltration attempt, Afghan Taliban forces fired mortars and other heavy weapons at Pakistani border posts. Pakistani forces responded with artillery fire targeting Taliban border posts, mortar sites and defensive positions. The officials said Afghan Taliban forces subsequently abandoned several positions and suffered casualties. The accounts could not be independently verified.

In Monday's airstrikes, Pakistan's Information Ministry said 28 militants were killed, while Afghan authorities said at least three civilians died and four others were wounded. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan confirmed the civilian casualties, and Kabul formally protested the attack. On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar expressed concern about what he said was the presence of more than two dozen anti-Pakistani militant groups in Afghanistan.

Monday's Pakistani airstrikes followed a shootout with militants in Hangu, a district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, that killed six Pakistani security personnel. Days earlier, a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside a police compound in the nearby city of Kohat. Eight gunmen then stormed the compound, triggering a 20-hour gunbattle that killed at least 21 people, most of them police officers. No group had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Pakistani authorities blamed the violence on the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups. The Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, have stepped up their attacks on Pakistani security forces, boosted by the Afghan Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.