Afghan officials accused Pakistan of killing at least 36 civilians and injuring more than 160 in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday night, the latest flare-up in a cross-border conflict that has killed hundreds since late February.
The strikes hit at least three border provinces, according to Hamdullah Fitrat, a spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan who also shared the death toll on X.
Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attacks, which a government official, Attaullah Tarar, said killed at least 32 militants and included a ground operation before the airstrikes.
The Afghan and Pakistani armies have been fighting for months, primarily along their 1,600-mile border, where Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of hosting and sponsoring militant groups that have killed thousands of Pakistani security forces in recent years. The Afghan government has denied the accusations. Attempts to peacefully resolve tensions, including through Chinese mediation, have so far stalled.
The airstrikes on Sunday came in retaliation for an attack on Pakistani paramilitaries. On Saturday, attackers detonated explosives and later opened fire on a Rangers camp in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, killing three officers and injuring four others, according to the Pakistani military.
A faction affiliated with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as T.T.P. or the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In private, Afghan Taliban officials acknowledge that Afghan militants have been joining the Pakistani Taliban, as both groups share ideological ties and fought together during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. But the officials say that the militants hold little sway over the group’s actions.
Pakistan, in response to the Pakistani Taliban’s insurgency, expelled more than a million Afghans last year and closed its border, depriving Afghanistan of its main import and export market.
Sunday’s airstrikes hit Paktika, Paktia and Kunar Provinces, according to Mr. Fitrat, the Taliban spokesman. A senior health official in Paktia Province, Meraj Gul Adil, said more than 130 people had been wounded in his province alone.
In Paktia, two airstrikes appeared to hit the same building 10 minutes apart, according to Mr. Adil and Mohammad Rafiq Haqyar, a local driver who said he had carried injured people to a nearby hospital. Sayed Rahman Ahrar, a resident who said he rescued his wounded sister from the rubble, also said that there had been two strikes on the one building.
Most of the casualties in the monthslong conflict have been Afghan: Pakistan’s military has carried out dozens of airstrikes on military infrastructure and Afghan cities, according to the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan. Afghan forces, on the other hand, have mostly led ground incursions on Pakistani border outposts and conducted sporadic attacks with low-intensity drones.
Both sides have failed to find a long-lasting solution to the tensions in recent meetings.
Government-level talks in the city of Urumqi, in northwestern China, failed to produce a cease-fire in April.
A group of about a dozen former ambassadors and nonofficial representatives from both countries, who are seen as being close to their respective governments, met in Istanbul earlier this month to discuss ending the fighting. They wrote a previously unreported proposal for peace that calls on both sides to disarm some militant groups like the Pakistani Taliban, often referred to as T.T.P., and Islamic State Khorasan Province, an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. The proposal also calls for the countries to resume cross-border trade, among other measures, according to the document seen by The New York Times.
Two participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity earlier this month to describe the confidential talks, said the main challenge would be to bring the proposal to their respective governments and convince them to reopen official peace talks.
