By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Wednesday that three of the five militants killed in a brazen attack on an army garrison in the southwestern province of Balochistan last month were Afghan nationals, and called on Kabul to crack down on cross-border terrorism.
The Foreign Office said in a statement that the bodies of the three slain terrorists, who hailed from Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, were handed over to the Afghan embassy in Islamabad. It did not provide any further details about their identities or affiliations.
The attack on July 13 targeted the Zhob Garrison in northern Balochistan, killing nine soldiers and wounding 16 others. The Pakistani Taliban, which has been fighting a bloody insurgency against the Pakistani state for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the assault.
Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan of harboring militants who launch attacks on its soil, especially in the restive border regions. The Taliban, which seized power in Kabul last year after a bloodless military campaign, denies the charge and says it does not interfere in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
The Foreign Office said it strongly condemned and expressed grave concerns over the use of Afghan soil and the involvement of Afghan militants in terrorism inside Pakistan.
“It is important that Afghanistan fulfills its obligation to prevent its territory from being used against any other country,” it said.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said militants behind a spate of suicide attacks in Pakistan were being aided by Afghan citizens.
In a statement released from his office late Tuesday, Sharif stopped short of accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban government of knowingly allowing attacks from its soil, but he did say Pakistani militants were operating from “sanctuaries” in the neighboring country.
“The Prime Minister noted with concern the involvement of the Afghan citizens in the suicide blasts,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) quoted him as saying.
Sharif’s statement came after a suicide bombing in the northwestern Bajaur district on Sunday killed 63 people, including several members of a religious party. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The statement also said there was “liberty of action available to the elements hostile to Pakistan in planning and executing such cowardly attacks on innocent civilians from the sanctuaries across the border.”
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