islamabad
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Pakistan said Sunday it had carried out airstrikes on militant camps across the border in Afghanistan in a significant test of the uneasy peace between the neighbors.
Pakistan’s intelligence ministry announced that its military had carried out an “intelligence-based selective operation” against seven camps belonging to militant groups responsible for a series of recent deadly attacks in the country. The airstrikes targeted the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and its affiliates, as well as groups associated with the Islamic State.
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged the attack in a statement, calling it a “clear violation of Afghanistan’s national sovereignty” and a “clear violation” of international law.
The airstrikes took place in civilian areas in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces, targeting a religious seminary and “several civilian residences,” the ministry said.
Saeed Taib Hamad, a senior Nangarhar police official, said on Afghan state television that women and children were among the 18 people killed. The bodies of the victims were still being dug out from under the rubble on Sunday morning, state media reported.
The airstrike comes after a month of deadly attacks inside Pakistan, most recently in the country’s northwest on Saturday when two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, were killed by insurgents, officials said.
Earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed dozens of people at a Shiite mosque in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan’s intelligence ministry announced on Sunday that the country has “conclusive evidence” that the February attack was carried out by militants on “orders of leaders and mentors based in Afghanistan.”
The new escalation will test the fragile ceasefire that has existed between the neighboring countries since October last year, when they engaged in the deadliest gunfight in years.
Dozens of civilians have been killed or injured in skirmishes that have broken out along the disputed 1,600-mile border. The conflict culminated in Afghanistan launching retaliatory attacks after Pakistan bombed the capital, Kabul.
Islamabad has long accused Kabul of hiding the TTP, a charge Kabul denies.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said in an interview with CNN in November that Pakistan wants to “eliminate” TTP leadership in Afghanistan and would use “all means available to us.”
