New Delhi: Just as a fragile ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban appeared to be holding, Afghan officials said late Friday that Pakistani forces had carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan that killed at least 10 people, including three local cricketers, prompting Afghanistan’s cricket board to withdraw from a planned tri-nation series with Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The strikes were reported hours after Pakistan and Taliban representatives agreed to extend a 48-hour truce until the conclusion of talks in Doha, Qatar.
Afghan authorities said the strikes hit areas of Paktika province and nearby districts close to the Pakistan border; a police spokesperson said a civilian home in Khanadar village had been hit, and there were casualties.
The Afghan Cricket Board identified three of the dead as Kabeer, Sibghatullah and Haroon. The players had travelled to Sharana, the provincial capital, for a friendly match before returning home, the board said. Five other residents of Urgun district also died and seven people were injured.
“A tragedy that claimed the lives of women, children and aspiring young cricketers who dreamed of representing their nation on the world stage,” Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan wrote on X.
The scheduled tri-nation series was to be played in Pakistan from 17 to 29 November.
The latest flare-up traces back to a series of explosions in Kabul last week that Afghan officials pinned on Pakistan—an accusation Islamabad has denied while saying its security forces killed militants in raids on Taliban-aligned hideouts.
Violence escalated along the frontier overnight, with both sides trading accusations: Pakistan has accused the Taliban of sheltering Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militants responsible for attacks inside Pakistan, while the Taliban say their actions were retaliatory responses to alleged Pakistani incursions and strikes that violated Afghan sovereignty.
The violence prompted the two sides to announce a 48-hour cease-fire, with each side saying the other had proposed the pause. The truce was later reported to have been extended to cover the Doha talks; yet the reported airstrikes late Friday night suggested that hostilities had not fully subsided on the ground.
Casualty counts from the skirmishes have been divergent. The Taliban claimed at one point to have killed 58 Pakistani soldiers, while Pakistan’s military has said its operations have neutralised scores of Taliban fighters and blamed the militants for killing 23 Pakistani troops in earlier confrontations.
The Taliban interim regime spokespersons reiterated that the violence stemmed from Pakistani aggression. “We reiterate once again that Afghanistan believes in a peaceful solution and regional security, but everything that is happening results from the Pakistani side’s aggressions,” an official posted on X.
In Islamabad, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif signalled a hardening posture. In a post on X, he said relations with Kabul “will no longer be like it was in the past,” adding: “There will no longer be protest notes or appeals for peace; no delegations will go to Kabul. Wherever the source of terrorism lies, it will have to pay a heavy price.”
Pakistani media quoted Pakistani security sources saying precision strikes had targeted hideouts of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group and other outlawed militants in border provinces, including Paktika and North Waziristan. Those strikes, they said, followed a bold gun-and-bomb attack on a Pakistani military installation in North Waziristan.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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