Pakistan’s military has carried out air strikes in Afghanistan, targeting what it called “camps and hideouts” belonging to armed groups behind a spate of recent attacks, including a deadly suicide bombing at a Shia mosque in Islamabad.
The Afghan Ministry of Defence condemned Sunday’s attacks, saying they “hit a religious school and residential homes” in the border provinces of Nangarhar and Paktika, “resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, including women and children”. Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said in a statement on X that the country’s military conducted “intelligence-based, selective operations” against seven camps and hideouts belonging to the Pakistan Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and its affiliates.
An affiliate of the Islamic State group was also targeted in the border region, it said.
The ministry said it had “conclusive evidence” that recent attacks in Islamabad, as well as in the northwestern Bajaur and Bannu districts, were perpetrated by fighters “on behest of their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers”. It said Pakistan has repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s Taliban government to take action to prevent armed groups from using Afghan territory to launch attacks, but that Kabul has failed to “undertake any substantive action”.
Pakistan “has always strived to maintain peace and stability in the region”, it added, but said the safety and security of Pakistani citizens remained its top priority. The Pakistani air strikes on Afghanistan came hours after a suicide bomber targeted a security convoy in the Bannu district of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel.
On Monday, a suicide bomber, backed by gunmen, rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the wall of a security post in the nearby Bajaur, killing 11 soldiers and a child. Authorities later said the attacker was an Afghan national.
On February 6, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives during noon prayers at the Khadija Tul Kubra mosque in Islamabad’s Tarlai Kalan area, killing at least 31 worshippers and wounding 170 others. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Islamabad attack.
While bombings are rare in the heavily guarded capital, the attack on Khadija Tul Kubra was the second such attack in three months, raising fears of a return to violence in Pakistan’s major urban centres. At the time, the Pakistani military said the “planning, training, and indoctrination for the attack took place in Afghanistan”.
Source; Here
