An overnight exchange of fire at one of the main Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossings killed four civilians, an Afghan official said yesterday, in the latest flare-up since deadly clashes in October.
Four others were wounded, Spin Boldak district governor Abdul Karim Jahad said.
The local hospital at the Pakistani border town of Chaman said three people had been discharged after getting minor injuries during the clash.
Photo: AFP
Each side accused the other of launching “unprovoked” attacks at the crossing between Chaman and Spin Boldak, despite a truce.
“Unfortunately, tonight, the Pakistani side started attacking Afghanistan in Kandahar, Spin Boldak district, and the forces of the Islamic Emirate were forced to respond,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on X on Friday.
Pakistan said it was Afghanistan that had fired first.
“A short while ago, the Afghan Taliban regime resorted to unprovoked firing” along the border, said Mosharraf Zaidi, a spokesman for Pakistan’s prime minister.
“An immediate, befitting and intense response has been given by our armed forces,” he added.
Residents on the Afghan side of the border said the exchange of fire broke out at about 10:30pm and lasted about two hours.
Kandahar information department head Ali Mohammed Haqma said Pakistan forces attacked with “light and heavy artillery,” and that mortar fire had struck civilian homes.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021.
Security issues are at the heart of the controversy, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of harboring militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, that launch attacks on its soil.
The Taliban government in Kabul denies the allegations.
More than 70 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the October clashes.
That fighting ended with a ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Turkey, but several subsequent rounds of talks in Doha and Istanbul have failed to produce a lasting deal, and the border between the two South Asian neighbors remains closed.
Kabul last month accused Islamabad of air strikes in a border area that killed 10 people, nine of them children.
Pakistan denied the claim.
The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday last week said that in light of “major” attacks on its soil, “the ceasefire is not holding.”
Pakistan this week said it would partially reopen the frontier for aid deliveries, with the crossing at Chaman expected to be used by UN agencies.
It was not clear when the deliveries will begin, but Zaidi said “aid deliveries are separate” and the latest clash would have “no impact on that decision.”
Shamans in Peru on Monday gathered for an annual New Year’s ritual where they made predictions for the year to come, including illness for US President Donald Trump and the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The United States should prepare itself because Donald Trump will fall seriously ill,” Juan de Dios Garcia proclaimed as he gathered with other shamans on a beach in southern Lima, dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, and sprinkling flowers on the sand. The shamans carried large posters of world leaders, over which they crossed swords and burned incense, some of which they stomped on. In this
Near the entrance to the Panama Canal, a monument to China’s contributions to the interoceanic waterway was torn down on Saturday night by order of local authorities. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made threats in the past few months to retake control of the canal, claiming Beijing has too much influence in its operations. In a surprising move that has been criticized by leaders in Panama and China, the mayor’s office of the locality of Arraijan ordered the demolition of the monument built in 2004 to symbolize friendship between the countries. The mayor’s office said in
‘TRUMP’S LONG GAME’: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that while fraud was a serious issue, the US president was politicizing it to defund programs for Minnesotans US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday said it was auditing immigration cases involving US citizens of Somalian origin to detect fraud that could lead to denaturalization, or revocation of citizenship, while also announcing a freeze of childcare funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some daycare centers. “Under US law, if an individual procures citizenship on a fraudulent basis, that is grounds for denaturalization,” US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Denaturalization cases are rare and can take years. About 11 cases were pursued per year between 1990 and 2017, the Immigrant Legal Resource
‘RADICALLY DIFFERENT’: The Kremlin said no accord would be reached if the new deal with Kyiv’s input did not remain within the limits fixed by the US and Russia in August Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida this weekend, but Russia on Friday accused him and his EU backers of seeking to “torpedo” a US-brokered plan to stop the fighting. Today’s meeting to discuss new peace proposals comes amidst Trump’s intensified efforts to broker an agreement on Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. The latest plan is a 20-point proposal that would freeze the war on its current front line, but open the door for Ukraine to pull back troops from the east, where demilitarized buffer zones could be created, according to details revealed by
RSS