Pakistani air strikes on Khost and Kunar provinces in eastern Afghanistan have killed mostly women and children, officials said.
Death toll from Pakistan military air strikes Targets in Khost and Kunar provinces in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday rose to at least 47, officials said.
Shabir Ahmad Osmani, director of culture and information at Khost, told AFP on Sunday: “Forty-one civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and 22 others injured in the air strikes. Pakistani forces near the Durand Line in Khost province.
Two other officials confirmed the death toll in Khost, while an Afghan official said on Saturday that six people had been killed in Kunar province.
Afghanistan’s largest news channel, TOLO News, has shown images of the bodies of children the country says were killed in the air strike.
The same channel showed protests by hundreds of residents in Khost condemning Pakistan and chanting anti-Pakistan slogans.
The Pakistani military has not yet commented on the attacks, but on Sunday the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad called on the Taliban government in Kabul to take “stern action” against armed militants carrying out the attacks. attack on Pakistan from Afghanistan.
“Terrorists are using Afghanistan’s land with impunity to carry out operations inside Pakistan,” the statement said in unusually harsh language.
Border tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have increased since the Taliban took power last year, with Islamabad claiming armed groups were carrying out regular attacks from Afghan soil.
Since the Taliban takeover, Islamabad has taken the lead in pushing the world to engage with the religion-run Afghan government.
However, it remains unclear whether Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is as supportive of the Afghan Taliban as his predecessor, Imran Khan, a cricket star turned conservative Muslim leader who was sacked in Last weekend in a political disturbance no. – vote confidently.
The Taliban denies harboring Pakistani armed fighters, but is also angered by the fence Islamabad is erecting along the two countries’ 2,700 km (1,680 mile) shared border.
