Kabul, Afghanistan — Afghanistan said on Sunday it had foiled an attempted airstrike on Bagram Air Base, a former US military base north of Kabul, as cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
Fighting between the neighbors has become the most intense in years, with Pakistan declaring it is at “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly in a region where al-Qaeda and other militant groups, including the Islamic State group, still have a presence and are trying to resurgence.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that carry out attacks against it and is allied with its archrival India. Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-brokered ceasefire ended intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting deal, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters in Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets attempted to “strike Afghan airspace and bomb Bagram Air Base” at 5 a.m. Afghan forces responded “with anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response to Pakistan’s statement.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump indicated that he wanted to restore the US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border offensive on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for a Pakistani airstrike earlier Sunday.
Pakistan said its airstrikes were targeting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP. Afghanistan says only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been responsible for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years. Pakistan has accused the Afghan Taliban government of providing safe havens for the TTP inside Afghanistan, a charge Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s attack in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared, “Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s troops – and each side keeps its own casualties drastically low.
Afghan officials said fighting continued overnight and into Sunday in border areas.
Nangarhar Province Police Command Spokesman Syed Tayyeb Hammad said that anti-aircraft missiles were fired at Pakistani warplanes from the provincial capital of Jalalabad and surrounding areas on Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatula Khowarazmi said Afghan forces from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces retaliated with snipers overnight. Two Pakistani drones were shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers were killed, he said.
Pakistani drone strikes hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday night, killing a woman and a child, while a mortar hit a house in Paktia province, killing another civilian, deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.
There was no immediate response to the claims by Pakistani officials.
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Bekatoros contributed from Athens, Greece.
(Tags to be translated)General News(T)War and Unrest(T)World News(T)Article(T)130647382
