By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military said on Wednesday it had shot down four drones launched from Afghanistan into the southwestern province of Balochistan, hours after Afghanistan’s Taliban administration claimed its forces had carried out airstrikes on Pakistani territory, in the latest flare-up along a border that has seen months of deadly clashes.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media wing, said in a statement that the Afghan Taliban had launched four “rudimentary” drones across the border into Balochistan on Tuesday, describing the move as part of Kabul’s continued backing of “terrorist outfits operating from inside their controlled territories.” It said the aircraft were detected as soon as they crossed the frontier and were brought down before they could inflict damage.
The military said its integrated air defence network detected the drones immediately and intercepted all four before they could achieve their intended objectives. The statement said the hostile aerial platforms were immediately picked up by Pakistan’s air defence network, and that security forces demonstrated high operational readiness in neutralising the incoming drones using sophisticated countermeasures.
Provincial authorities in Balochistan gave a fuller account of the episode than the military did. A drone was sighted near a government school in the town of Saranan, and two people were injured, according to provincial officials.
Afghanistan’s Taliban-run defence ministry offered a starkly different version of events. It said its forces had struck what it described as an Islamic State position in Saranan, in Balochistan, as well as targets elsewhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. On the social media platform X, the ministry said the strikes had caused casualties among members of the group’s regional affiliate, ISIL-K.
The competing accounts could not be independently verified. Afghanistan’s Taliban forces have no fighter jets and lack a fully operational air force, though they have deployed small drones in fighting with Pakistan, concentrated mainly in the border regions.
In its statement, the ISPR accused the Taliban administration of using such episodes to distract from conditions at home. It said the drone launches were “gimmicks” intended to mislead the Afghan public, and that Kabul’s conduct was deepening the hardship of ordinary Afghans rather than easing it. The military called on the Taliban to abandon its support for militant groups and observe what it termed the principle of peaceful coexistence with its neighbour.
The ISPR statement carried a pointed warning. It said any further provocation would draw a forceful response, and that the armed forces stood ready to defend “every inch of the motherland.” It added that cross-border threats to Pakistan’s sovereignty would continue to be met with “swift, decisive, and overwhelming responses” under Operation Ghazab-lil-Haq, the codename Pakistan has assigned to its campaign against militant infrastructure it says operates from Afghan soil.
Wednesday’s exchange extended a rapid deterioration in relations between the two neighbours that has played out over the past week. It came two days after Pakistan said it had conducted cross-border strikes against militant hideouts in eastern Afghanistan, in retaliation for an attack on a Pakistan Rangers camp in Karachi that it attributed to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP.
Islamabad said 29 militants were killed in that round of strikes, and it subsequently summoned Afghanistan’s chargé d’affaires, telling him that Afghan nationals had taken part in the Karachi assault. The Karachi attack itself, on Saturday, targeted a Sindh Rangers facility in the city’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar neighbourhood, where militants detonated an explosive device at the camp’s entrance before opening fire on troops inside. Three paramilitary soldiers were killed and four were wounded. Pakistan’s Foreign Office later issued a formal demarche to Afghanistan’s chargé d’affaires, saying evidence from the attack, including a suspect captured alive, showed Afghan territory and Afghan nationals had again been used to stage an assault inside Pakistan.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban administration of allowing the TTP and allied militant groups to operate from Afghan territory to plan and launch attacks inside Pakistan, an allegation Kabul denies.
The dispute sits atop a broader collapse in relations between Islamabad and Kabul that has unfolded since the Taliban returned to power in 2021 and accelerated sharply in the past year. Hundreds of people have been killed in cross-border fighting since February, when Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes after Pakistan carried out air attacks inside Afghan territory. That fighting has included direct clashes between the two countries’ forces along the frontier, in addition to the militant attacks and air raids each side has blamed on the other.
Pakistan has also closed most trade crossings along the border since late last year, a measure that has disrupted commerce between the two countries and cut into Afghan transit trade routed through Pakistani ports.
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