KABUL, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Pakistan struck targets inside Afghanistan’s major cities overnight, Pakistani and Taliban officials said on Friday, as cross-border fighting intensified following months of tensions and skirmishes between the two countries.
Security sources in Pakistan said the strikes involved air and ground strikes against Taliban posts, headquarters and ammunition depots in multiple sectors along the border.
Both sides reported heavy losses, issuing sharply differing figures that Reuters could not independently verify.
The strikes mark the most serious escalation between the neighbours in months, threatening a fragile ceasefire along the 2,600-km (1,615-mile) frontier and deepening a long-running dispute over Islamabad’s accusation that Kabul harbours Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants, a charge the Taliban deny.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Pakistani forces carried out airstrikes in parts of Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia.
“Pakistani counterstrikes against targets in Afghanistan continue,” a Pakistani government spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, said in a post on X, describing the action as a response to “unprovoked Afghan attacks.”
A Reuters witness in Kabul said many ambulance sirens could be heard following loud blasts.
Video shared by Pakistani security officials showed flashes of light in the night from firing along the border and the sound of heavy artillery. Another video showed a building on fire, which the officials said was a Taliban headquarters in Paktia.
Zaidi said 133 Afghan Taliban fighters were killed and more than 200 wounded, with 27 posts destroyed and nine captured.
Mujahid said 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 19 posts seized, while eight Taliban fighters were killed, 11 wounded and 13 civilians injured in Nangarhar.
The latest fighting follows Pakistani airstrikes earlier this week that Islamabad said targeted camps of TTP and Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan. Kabul denies allowing militants to operate from its territory and had warned it would respond.
Clashes erupted along the frontier on Thursday night after the Taliban launched what it described as retaliatory attacks on Pakistani military installations. Both sides had claimed to destroy border posts in that fighting.
(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar and Sayed Hassib in Kabul, and Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Editing by Stephen Coates)
