Pakistan says it killed 29 fighters in strikes along the Afghan border
Pakistan’s military said it killed 29 fighters in ground operations and air strikes targeting what officials called hideouts and safe havens of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar, Al Jazeera reported . The strikes followed an armed assault on a paramilitary Rangers headquarters in Karachi that killed three soldiers; security forces killed three attackers and arrested an Afghan national, and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway TTP faction, claimed responsibility.
The exchange fits a pattern that has hardened over the past year. Islamabad accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of sheltering fighters who stage attacks inside Pakistan, while Kabul denies the charge — a dispute that has produced repeated tit-for-tat strikes and, since February, hundreds of deaths. By again striking targets on Afghan soil in response to an attack on its own territory, Pakistan signals it intends to keep hitting across the border rather than wait on mediation, several rounds of which have failed to hold. The risk is a widening cycle in which each attack inside Pakistan invites retaliation that Kabul treats as a violation of its sovereignty.