Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban claim major casualties

Pakistan has bombed Afghanistan’s capital Kabul and other cities, claiming to have killed hundreds of Afghan Taliban fighters, as Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Islamabad would now be waging “open war”, while Afghanistan has also claimed to have inflicted substantial losses.

In a major escalation of the simmering tensions into all-out conflict between the neighbours, Asif said on Friday that his country’s “patience has run out” with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, following attacks by Afghan forces against Pakistani military positions along their shared border earlier.

Asif framed the attack as one that his country had been forced to make, and that followed “aggression” from Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s military later said its operation in Afghanistan was continuing “on the directions of the prime minister”.

Reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said his team had been able to reach the town of Landi Kotal, near the Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan, where they were able to observe ongoing clashes.

“We were able to see and hear outgoing fire from the Pakistani side that appears to be heavy artillery,” he said.

The AFP news agency reported that Afghan troops were seen heading towards the frontier early Friday.

Significant claims of casualties

Both sides have claimed they have inflicted serious losses on the other, while sustaining their own casualties.

Pakistan’s military says 274 Taliban fighters have been killed and more than 400 injured in attacks that hit 22 locations. It said 83 Taliban posts had been destroyed and 17 others captured.

It said 12 Pakistani soldiers had been killed and 27 injured, while one was missing in action.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence claimed that 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in its attacks that ended about midnight on Friday, including some whose bodies were taken into Afghanistan, and that “several others were captured alive.”

It said eight Afghan soldiers had been killed and 11 wounded.

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify the various claims of casualties inflicted by either side.

Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the Pakistani military had struck targets in locations including Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia and Jalalabad.

In a statement, he said the strikes had hit “innocent citizens, children, and women”, including the bombing of a farmer’s home in Jalalabad that killed most of his family, and an attack on a religious school for children in Paktika.

In a news conference, he said his government wanted “dialogue” with Pakistan to resolve the ongoing fighting, adding that Pakistani reconnaissance planes were still flying over Afghan airspace.

“We have repeatedly emphasised a peaceful solution, and still want the problem to be resolved through dialogue,” Mujahid said.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information also said it was also targeting Afghan Taliban forces in several districts of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – Chitral, Khyber, Mohmand, Kurram and Bajaur.

Afghanistan had “successfully conducted” air strikes using drones ⁠to hit military targets in ⁠Pakistan, its defence ministry and a government spokesperson said on Friday, ‌as the clashes continued.

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan Taliban fighters had tried ⁠to use drones ⁠against targets in Pakistan but they were brought ⁠down by anti-drone systems ⁠and there ⁠was “no damage to life”.

Earlier attacks

Pakistan’s strikes came after Afghanistan said it had carried out “large-scale offensive operations ⁠against Pakistani military ⁠positions and installations on the border shared by the two countries on Thursday.

Along with the dozens of Pakistani soldiers it claimed to have killed in the attacks, it said it destroyed 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases. The ministry said the fighting ended about midnight, about four hours after it began Thursday.

Pakistan claimed that its attacks on Sunday had killed at least 70 fighters, but Afghanistan rejected the claim, saying civilians had been killed.

Poor relations

A statement from the office of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the whole country was united behind Pakistan’s armed forces.

“The people of Pakistan and its Armed Forces are fully prepared to safeguard the nation’s security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” the statement said. “There will be no leniency in defending our beloved homeland, and any aggression will be met with a fitting response.”

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which share a 2,611-kilometre-long (1,622-mile) border, have nose-dived since fighting in October killed more than 70 people on both sides of the border.

The tension stems from Pakistani accusations that Kabul has allowed armed groups such as the Pakistan Taliban to use Afghanistan as a base and launch attacks on Pakistan.

The Pakistan Taliban shares deep ideological ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but is a distinct movement.

“Pakistan made every effort to keep the situation normal through direct means and through friendly countries,” said Asif. “It engaged in full-fledged diplomacy. But the Taliban became a proxy for India.”

“In the past, Pakistan’s role has been positive. It has hosted five million Afghans for 50 years. Even today, millions of Afghans are earning their livelihood on our soil. Our cup of patience has overflowed. Now it is open war between us and you,” Asif said.

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said on X that Afghans would “defend their beloved homeland with complete unity in all circumstances and will respond to aggression with courage” amid the attacks.

“Pakistan cannot free itself from the violence and bombings – those problems it has created itself – but must change its own policy and choose the path of good neighbourliness, respect, and civilised relations with Afghanistan,” he said.

Elizabeth Threlkeld, director of the South Asia Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, DC, said the latest clashes came as no surprise following months of “frayed” tensions between the neighbours.

“It is significant to the extent that it represents perhaps a shift in strategy,” Threlkeld said, noting the “more aggressive, kinetic attacks” from Pakistan.

“We’ve seen a couple of terrorist attacks within Pakistan that were quite significant,” she said. “I’m not surprised that after those cumulative attacks, that tensions have frayed and things have again gone in this direction, unfortunately.”

Clashes between Pakistan and ⁠Afghanistan in October killed dozens of soldiers, until a ceasefire brought an end to the fighting.

Pakistan has been on high security alert since it launched air strikes earlier this week that Islamabad said targeted camps of Pakistani Taliban and ISIL (ISIS) fighters in eastern Afghanistan.

Offers of mediation

Russia, China, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia were trying to mediate, diplomats and news reports said, while Iran, which borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan, has also offered to help.

Meanwhile, Zalmay Khalilzad, a former United States ambassador to Afghanistan, said earlier on Thursday that the tit-for-tat attacks over recent days were a “terrible dynamic that must stop”.

“A better option is a diplomatic agreement between the [two] countries that neither would allow its territory to be used by individuals and groups to threaten the security of the other,” Khalilzad said.

“The implementation of the agreement should be monitored by a trusted [third] party, for example, Turkiye. This approach is a much wiser course than continuing with attacks and counterattacks.”