Pakistan launches air attacks inside Afghanistan following alleged drone incursion

Pakistan says it launched air attacks inside Afghanistan early on Thursday morning, in response to an alleged drone incursion from the neighboring country a day earlier – in another round of escalation between the two countries.

The “aerial and drone strikes” targeted ten locations for launching and storing the drones that crossed into Pakistan on Wednesday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a post on X. He did not specify the locations hit.

The minister said Pakistan’s air defense systems “neutralized all intruding platforms before they could reach any of their intended targets.” He added that Pakistan’s response was “deliberate, precise, calibrated and proportionate, and strictly limited to identified military objectives directly linked to the attempted attacks.”

The Afghan authorities have not yet issued an official response regarding the strikes or the damage inside their territory.

Militant attacks have risen in Pakistan’s border areas in recent months. Islamabad has accused Kabul of hosting the militants and launched attacks inside Afghanistan in response. Kabul, however, says the strikes are hitting civilians.

Islamabad struck alleged militant hideouts in Afghanistan earlier this week, in retaliation for a car-bomb attack on a mosque in a police facility in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on September 18 that killed at least 16 people.

Pakistan claimed that the strikes, in the Nurgal district of Kunar province and the Barmal district of Paktika province, killed 28 militants. Afghanistan’s Taliban government said three civilians were killed, including a woman. A Taliban government spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, warned that there would be an “appropriate response.”

Tarar said Thursday that Pakistan will “neither accept nor tolerate attacks launched from Afghan territory, whether by terrorist groups or by the Afghan Taliban regime itself.” He also called on the Taliban government to take action against the terror groups operating from Afghanistan, and warned against further provocations.