The Government of Pakistan has bombed the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, as well as other locations, as announced in the early hours of this Friday, when the deaths of at least “133 Afghan Taliban” have been claimed in a conflict that Pakistani Defense Minister Jawaya Asif has already described as an “open war” with Afghanistan.
“Pakistani counterattacks against targets in Afghanistan continue. The death of 133 Afghan Taliban has been confirmed and more than 200 wounded. Many more casualties are estimated in attacks against military targets in Kabul, Paktia and Kandahar,” said the Pakistani Minister of Information, Ataulá Tarar, in a report broadcast on social networks with information updated at 3:40 (local time) on the operation baptized as “Wrath of Truth”.
Tarar has also stated that the Pakistani forces have destroyed “more than 80 tanks, artillery pieces and armored vehicles”as well as 27 Taliban posts, to which another nine have been captured.
Despite the figures indicated by the Pakistani Government, The spokesman for the Afghan Government, Zabihullah Mujahid, has indicated on social networks that “no one has been injured“, although he confirmed that “the cowardly Pakistani army has bombed some places in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktia.”
In turn, Pakistan’s Defense Minister, Jawaya Asif, has accused the Taliban of having become “an ally of India”, despite the fact that, according to him, “Pakistan’s role in the past has been positive.” “It has welcomed 5 million Afghans for 50 years. Even today, millions of Afghans make a living on our land,” he defended.
“Our patience has run out. Now we will have an open war with you,” he proclaimed in a social media post in which he assured that “today, when (the Taliban) have tried to attack Pakistan with aggression, our forces are giving a decisive response.”
Pakistani soldiers killed
The situation has escalated hours after the spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan announced that the Afghan Army has begun to attack “Pakistani bases and installations along the Durand Line” – which marks the limit between both states for its 2,640 kilometers in length – in operations “in response to insurrections by Pakistani military circles.”
Shortly afterwards, in an update of these military operations, The Afghan Ministry of Defense has reported in a statement of “intense shelling towards the east and southeast” of the border, specifically “near the provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan”. In these attacks, “55 Pakistani soldiers have died and two bases and 19 posts” of the Islamabad forces have been captured, according to data from the Afghan ministry, which has claimed to have captured “several” alive and also to have transferred the bodies of some Pakistani soldiers to Afghanistan.
Likewise, the Ministry has indicated that the fighting lasted four hours and that it stopped at midnight “by order of the Chief of Staff of the Islamic Emirate.” On the other hand, it has also recognized the death in combat of eight Afghan soldiers, while eight have been injured and thirteen civilians “have also been injured in the enemy’s missile attack against a refugee camp in Nangarhar, including women and children.”
The intensification of hostilities comes from an already tense context between both countries and in which Kabul denounced on Monday before the United Nations Security Council bombings carried out by Pakistan against the country during the weekend, attacks that resulted in the death of more than a dozen civilians and that Kabul alleged were aimed at “terrorist camps and hideouts” of the armed group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Taliban. Pakistanis, and the jihadist group Islamic State, in an operation in response to the recent suicide attacks that have taken place on Pakistani soil.