Afghan Taliban hit ‘several points’ in Pakistan in retaliation for attacks | Taliban News

The attacks came days after the Taliban vowed retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan.

Afghan Taliban forces have targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said, days after Pakistani jets carried out the attack. bombing from the air within the country.

A defense ministry statement on Saturday did not directly specify that Pakistan had been hit, but said the strikes were carried out “beyond the ‘hypothetical line'” – a term used by Afghan authorities to denote their border with Pakistan long disputed.

“Several points outside the hypothetical line, which served as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, were targeted in retaliation from the southeast direction of the country,” the ministry said.

Asked if the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi said: “We do not consider it to be Pakistani territory, so we cannot confirm the territory, but it was on the other side of a hypothetical line.”

For decades, Afghanistan has rejected the border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities in the 19th century through the mountainous and often lawless tribal belt between present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

No details were given on casualties or specific areas targeted. The Pakistan Army’s Public Relations Department and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, a security source told the AFP news agency on Saturday that at least one Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and seven others wounded in a cross-border exchange of fire with Afghan forces.

Sporadic clashes, including heavy weapons, broke out overnight between border forces on the border between Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Afghanistan’s Khost province, officials from both countries said.

The incidents come after Afghan Taliban authorities accused Pakistan of killing 46 people, mostly women and children, in airstrikes near the border this week.

Islamabad said it had targeted militant hideouts along the border, while Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday that they would retaliate.

The neighbors have a strained relationship, and Pakistan has said several attacks on its territory have been launched from Afghan soil – something the Afghan Taliban denies.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – which shares a common ideology with its Afghan counterparts – last week claimed an attack on an army outpost near the border with Afghanistan, in which Pakistan said it killed 16 soldiers.

“We want good relations with them [Afghanistan] but TTP should be stopped from killing our innocent people,” Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a cabinet address on Friday.

“This is our red line.”