Pakistani air raids break fragile ceasefire as Islamabad faces pressure on both borders.
Islamabad, Pakistan – In the weeks before the Pakistani military carried out air raids inside Afghanistan over the weekend, violence had been unrelenting.
On February 6, a suicide bomber detonated explosives during Friday prayers at a Shia mosque in the capital, Islamabad, killing at least 36 worshippers and wounding 170 others.
Days later, an explosives-laden vehicle rammed a security post in Bajaur in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing 11 soldiers and a child. The attacker, according to Pakistani authorities, was later identified as an Afghan national.
After the Bajaur attack, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a demarche to the Taliban authorities on February 19, summoning the Afghan deputy head of mission in Islamabad.
But two days later, in the early hours of Saturday, another suicide bomber struck a security convoy in Bannu, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel.
Pakistan’s patience appeared to have run out, and early on Sunday, the military struck back, targeting what it described as “camps and hideouts” in Afghan border areas.
According to Pakistani authorities, air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces targeted sanctuaries of Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, and its affiliates, killing at least “80 militants in intelligence-based air strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border targeting seven camps”.
Kabul has rejected those claims. The Afghan Ministry of Defence said the strikes hit a religious school and residential homes, killing and wounding dozens, including women and children. Afghan sources told Al Jazeera that at least 17 people were killed in Nangarhar alone. Kabul pledged a “measured and appropriate response”.
Later on Sunday, India entered the picture, condemning the Pakistani military action and throwing in its support for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“India strongly condemns Pakistan’s airstrikes on Afghan territory that have resulted in civilian casualties, including women and children, during the holy month of Ramadan,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
“It is another attempt by Pakistan to externalise its internal failures,” he said.
In many ways, the statement from New Delhi underscored the unease in Islamabad over India’s growing engagement with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan — an emerging partnership between two countries that Pakistan has repeatedly blamed in recent months for its domestic security turmoil.
