Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has said that the country is in a state of open war with Afghanistan after Islamabad’s strikes on Kabul, the BBC reports.
The minister added that Pakistani patience has run out. The strikes on Kabul came after the Taliban announced a large-scale attack on Pakistani military posts along the border on the evening of the 26th of February. The two countries have been engaged in clashes for months, despite a fragile ceasefire in October. Talks last year failed to reach an agreement to end the fighting, and both sides have accused each other of being frivolous.
On the 26th of February, the Taliban army announced that it had launched a retaliatory operation. Pakistan responded swiftly, saying the Taliban had miscalculated and carried out unprovoked attacks on its northwestern province, to which Islamabad responded promptly and effectively. It launched airstrikes early on the 27th of February, striking targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktika. All three cities are located near the 2,600-kilometer-long Pakistani-Afghan border, which stretches through the mountains.
In response to the attacks, Afghan spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid posted a since-deleted post on the X saying the group had carried out strikes on Pakistani army positions early on the 27th of February.
The Taliban said they had also carried out airstrikes inside Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Atta Tarar said the army had intercepted army drones that were targeting an army garrison town that houses a military academy. Pakistani Prime Minister Shahzad Sharif said the country’s forces were ready to crush any military ambitions and vowed there would be no compromise in defending the homeland.
Taliban officials said on the 27th of February that Pakistani rockets had also hit a refugee camp in Nangarhar, housing Afghans who had recently arrived from Pakistan, wounding nine people.
Pakistan has long accused the Taliban government of supporting terrorists targeting Pakistanis. They are blamed for suicide attacks in Pakistan, including a recent attack on a mosque in Islamabad.
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