The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan announced on Thursday that they had carried out airstrikes on several areas of Pakistan, including a location near the capital, Islamabad, following new fighting that has erupted in recent hours between the two Asian countries.
The Ministry of Defense said that “a military camp near Faizabad, in Islamabad, a military base in Noushera, military positions in Jamrud and other locations in Abbottabad” were targeted.
The strikes were launched by the Afghan air force in mid-morning local time, according to a statement published by the ministry on social media and cited by the Spanish news agency Europa Press.
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“The air operation was successfully carried out, targeting military bases, command centers and key strategic facilities in Pakistan,” the ministry said.
It described the action as a “response to air incursions by Pakistani forces in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia.”
The Pakistani government, which has not yet reacted to the Taliban’s claims, had hours earlier declared an “open war” following a wave of Afghan attacks on Thursday, which led Islamabad to bomb Kabul and other cities, including Kandahar.
Pakistan’s Information Minister, Attaullah Tarar, said that the Pakistani strikes, carried out as part of “Operation Wrath of Truth,” killed more than 130 alleged Taliban fighters.
Kabul, for its part, claimed that Thursday’s offensive killed more than 50 Pakistani soldiers along the Durand Line, the 2,640-kilometer border separating the two countries.
The hostilities erupted days after Afghan authorities denounced Pakistani bombings at the United Nations Security Council, which they say killed more than a dozen civilians.
Islamabad argued that those attacks targeted “terrorist camps and hideouts” belonging to the armed group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Pakistani Taliban, and the extremist group Islamic State, in response to recent suicide attacks on Pakistani soil.
