Afghanistan says children among four killed in Pakistan’s latest attacks | Conflict news

Civilians – three children and a woman – are killed in attack in Khost province, local official says.

Four people have been killed, including three children, in a nighttime Pakistani bombing attack in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials say as fighting continues for a third straight week.

Mustaghfir Gubuz, spokesman for the governor of Khost province, told the AFP news agency on Monday that at midnight (19:30 GMT Sunday), Pakistani forces “fired mortar shells at the village of Nari in Gurbuz district, killing a woman and a child.”

The governor’s office also said in a statement that mortar shelling killed two children in the Afghan Khost area of ​​Dubai.

Separately, government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said in X that one person was killed on Sunday in the eastern province of Nuristan when a shelling hit a “civilian house.”

According to Afghan authorities, cross-border fighting last week killed at least 18 civilians.

On Sunday, the World Food Program (WFP) said it had begun mobilizing to provide “immediate life-saving food” to more than 20,000 families who had been displaced in Afghanistan due to the conflict.

In a press release, John Aylieff, WFP Afghanistan director, said: “We cannot afford to look the other way.”

“Afghanistan is caught between two conflicts, and any further instability will push millions of people further into hunger, while adding tension to a region already on the brink,” Aylieff said.

Tensions flared in late February and led to some of the worst fighting in recent years, when Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes that Kabul said killed civilians.

The attacks prompted Pakistan to declare “open war” against Afghan authorities and attack the capital.

Islamabad accuses Kabul of harboring Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) fighters who have claimed responsibility for attacks on Pakistan, a charge the Afghan Taliban have denied.

China announced on Monday that its special envoy Yue Xiaoyong had spent a week until Saturday mediating between the two countries and urging an immediate ceasefire.

Beijing Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said China has “constantly mediated the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan through its own channels.”