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Pakistan carried out new bombings on Kabul and other regions of Afghanistan that caused four deaths in the capital and two in a border area, Taliban authorities reported this Friday, while Islamabad confirmed the night attacks.
For months, Pakistan has accused its neighbor of harboring armed groups, including the Pakistani Taliban TTP, responsible for numerous deadly attacks on its territory, something that the Afghan government denies.
The conflict escalated on February 26, when Afghanistan launched a border offensive in response to previous Pakistani airstrikes. Islamabad then declared “open war” on the Taliban authorities and launched bombings in the capital.
“Continuing its aggression, the Pakistani military regime has once again bombed Kabul, Kandahar (southern city)” and, among others, the border regions of “Paktia and Paktika,” government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said this Friday on the social network X.
A Pakistani security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed to AFP the night attacks on Afghanistan. He said the bombings were aimed at “TTP targets.”
In Kabul, four people were killed and 15 were injured by “a bombing by the Pakistani regime” that hit “civilian houses,” added the police spokesman for the Afghan capital, Khalid Zadran, on the social network X.
An AFP team that went to the scene saw one house completely destroyed and another dozen badly damaged by the bombing, with the roof and walls collapsed. Shocked residents were in the streets, some with bandages on their faces.
“Two men and two women died as martyrs,” Abdul Rahim Tarakhil, representative of that district of the capital, told AFP.
“There are no military posts here, there are only common and poor people who are not involved in politics,” he said.
In addition, a police spokesman in Nangarhar province informed AFP that a woman and a child were killed by a Pakistani projectile, in a region of eastern Afghanistan bordering Pakistan.
“A projectile hit a house in the Mohmand Dara district, killing a woman and a child,” said spokesman Sayed Tayeeb Hammad, attributing the attack to Pakistan.
– «Last breath –
Abdul Wahid, 29, was injured in one of the houses in Kabul. “10 minutes had passed after midnight, I went to do my ablutions when a noise was heard coming from another house, I don’t know what happened next, but all the bricks fell on me, the women and the children,” he told AFP.
“I stayed like that for ten minutes, as if it were my last breath, then my neighbors came and removed the bricks (…) and took us to the hospital,” he added. Four members of his family were injured.
In Kandahar, the southern city where the supreme leader of the Afghan Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, is being held, the Pakistani attacks hit the fuel depot of the Kam Air airline company, near the airport, according to the Afghan government.
An AFP correspondent saw a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky.
Since the Pakistani declaration of an open conflict, clashes have multiplied in the border areas.
Between Tuesday and Thursday, seven civilians, including several children, were killed by Pakistani gunfire in the eastern and southeastern border regions of Afghanistan, according to Afghan authorities and medical sources.
According to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) on March 5, 56 Afghan civilians, including 24 children, have died since the fighting intensified on February 26.
At least 115,000 people have been displaced in Afghanistan by the fighting, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
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