Overnight exchange of fire along the Afghan-Pakistan border kills 5 and wounds 8, officials say

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — An overnight exchange of fire between Afghan forces and Pakistani troops along the two countries’ tense border killed five Afghan civilians and wounded five others, while three civilians were also wounded on the Pakistani side, officials from the two countries said Saturday.

Each side has blamed the other for triggering the clash in violation of a tenuous two-month ceasefire.

Those killed in the border area near the Afghan city of Spin Boldak, in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, included three children and one woman, said Ali Mohammad Haqmal, the head of information of Spin Boldak District.

Pakistani police and a hospital official in the Pakistani city of Chaman, Mohammad Awais, said three people, including a woman, were wounded in the shooting and shelling that came from the Afghan side. The clashes lasted until dawn Saturday, police said.

Tension between the two countries has been high since October, when deadly border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants, and wounded hundreds on both sides. The violence erupted after explosions in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Oct. 9 that the Taliban government blamed on Pakistan and vowed to avenge.

The fighting has been the worst between the neighbors in recent years. A Qatar-mediated ceasefire began in October and has largely held, but peace talks have so far failed to produce an agreement.

Pakistan has suffered several militant attacks inside its country, and has blamed most of them on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. Though separate from the Afghan Taliban, the TTP is closely allied with it, and many of its fighters are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power there in 2021, further straining relations.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have both blamed each other for the cross-border exchange of fire that broke out Friday night.

Haqmal said the Afghan side didn’t respond for 10-15 minutes after Pakistani forces began shooting, and that once the Afghan side responded, it stopped firing “within an hour.” The shooting by the Pakistani side continued until Saturday morning, he said.

However, Mohammad Sadiq, a local Pakistani police official, claimed the shooting started from the Afghan side and that Pakistani troops returned fire near the Chaman border crossing, a key transit route.

The exchange came a day after Pakistan said it would allow the United Nations to send relief supplies into Afghanistan through the Chaman and Torkham border crossings, which have been mostly closed for nearly two months amid escalating tensions.

Abidullah Farooqi, a spokesman for the Afghan border police, said Friday night that Pakistani forces first threw a hand grenade into the Spin Boldak border area on the Afghan side, prompting a response. He said Afghanistan remains committed to the ceasefire.

Mosharraf Zaidi, a spokesman for Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, said on X that earlier in the evening, the “Afghan Taliban regime resorted to unprovoked firing along the Chaman border.” He added that Pakistani forces remain fully alert and committed to ensuring the country’s territorial integrity and the safety of its citizens.

Separately, Pakistan’s military said Saturday that its security forces had killed nine Pakistani Taliban militants during two intelligence-based operations Friday in Pakistan’s northwestern districts of Tank and Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

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Ahmed reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.