Pakistan bombed Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and two other provinces on Friday, hours after a cross-border attack, the latest escalation of deadly violence between the volatile neighbours who signed a Qatar-mediated ceasefire in 2025.
Following months of tit-for-tat clashes, Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops on Thursday night in what the Taliban government said was retaliation for earlier deadly airstrikes.
Hours later, at least three explosions were heard in Kabul, with both sides making different claims about the number of casualties and sites hit.
Pakistan’s federal minister for information and broadcasting, Attaullah Tarar, claimed the strikes on Friday in Kabul, Paktia, and Kandahar killed 133 Afghan Taliban officials and wounded more than 200, with further possible casualties.
Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday that his country’s armed forces could “crush” aggressors, while the country’s defence minister has proclaimed “open war”.
In a post on X Friday, defence minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said that Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Nato forces and expected the Taliban to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability.
Instead, he alleged, the Taliban had gathered militants from around the world and begun “exporting terrorism.”
“Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us,” he said.
Afghanistan’s defence ministry said that 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in the border clashes on Thursday, with some bodies taken into Afghanistan, including several “captured alive”. It said eight Afghan soldiers were reported killed, with 11 others wounded. The ministry reported the destruction of 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases.
Mosharraf Ali Zaidi, spokesperson for Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, previously denied that any Pakistani soldiers had been captured.
Relations between the neighbours have plunged in recent months, with land border crossings largely shut since deadly fighting in October that killed more than 70 people on both sides.
Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to act against militant groups that carry out attacks in Pakistan, which the Taliban government denies.
The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, urged both sides to protect civilians as required under international law and “to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Commenting on the Friday airstrikes, Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Naqvi said the strikes on Afghanistan were a “befitting response”.
Afghanistan said its military launched its attack across the border into Pakistan late on Thursday in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas on Sunday.
Efforts to produce a lasting agreement between the two nations has failed, with negotiations and an initial ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey in October looking increasingly shaky.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 2,611km-long border known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognised.
Afghan authorities were evacuating a refugee camp near the Torkham border crossing after several refugees were wounded and 13 civilians, including women and children, killed, authorities said.
On the Pakistani side of the border, local police said residents were also evacuating to safer areas, while some Afghan refugees who had been waiting to cross back into Afghanistan were also moved to secure locations.
Tension has been high between the two neighbours for months, with deadly border clashes in October killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. The violence followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan. Islamabad, at the time, conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to target militant hideouts.
