Pakistani airstrikes kill 18 family members in Nangarhar province, officials say

Pakistani airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan killed 18 members of one family in Nangarhar, Taliban officials said, sharply escalating cross-border tensions.

Taliban local officials confirmed that 18 members of a single family were killed in Pakistani airstrikes in Behsud district of Nangarhar province.

Sayed Tayeb Hamad, spokesman for the Taliban police command in Nangarhar, said that only four out of 24 family members survived the strike. The head of the household was identified as Shahabuddin.

Taliban authorities said women and children were among those killed. Quraishi Badlon, the Taliban’s information chief in Nangarhar, said at least 17 civilians, including 11 children, were killed and five others wounded in the overnight strikes.

Pakistani fighter jets reportedly bombed parts of Khogyani, Ghani Khil and Behsud districts in Nangarhar, as well as Barmal district in Paktika, around midnight on Saturday.

Pakistan’s Information Ministry claimed it had targeted seven hideouts belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan, describing the operation as retaliatory.

According to Islamabad, the strikes were carried out in response to recent suicide and car bomb attacks on a Shi’ite mosque in Islamabad and in Bajaur and Bannu during Ramadan. Both the TTP and Islamic State Khorasan claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban authorities in Kabul of failing to prevent militant groups from using Afghanistan territory to stage attacks inside Pakistan, an allegation the Taliban deny.

Cross-border airstrikes and artillery exchanges have occurred several times over the past two years, straining already fragile diplomatic ties between the two neighbors.

The Taliban’s Defense Ministry condemned the airstrikes as attacks on civilian and religious sites and warned that a “calculated response” would be delivered at an appropriate time, raising fears of further escalation.

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