By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has carried out air strikes on militant camps along the Afghan border, killing 28 terrorists, days after a suicide bombing and gun assault on a police compound in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa left more than 20 people dead.
Pakistan’s information ministry said on Monday that the strikes had destroyed three targets, among them a training centre for suicide bombers, and had wiped out large stores of weapons and ammunition. It said “maximum precautions” were taken and that there was “no collateral damage”.
The Taliban government in Kabul said the raids hit civilian areas of Kunar and Paktika provinces, killing three people and wounding four. It promised an “appropriate response”, raising the prospect of a further round of cross-border fighting between the two neighbours.
The raids followed a ground operation by security forces around Kohat, Hangu and Thal, in which the ministry said nine militants were killed and several wounded on Sunday. Together with the air strikes, it put the total number of militants killed at 37.
Officials described the action as a response to “multiple terrorist incidents” in the province. The deadliest came on Friday, when a suicide bomber struck a mosque inside the Police Lines compound in Kohat during prayers and eight gunmen then stormed the site, triggering a battle with security forces that lasted about 20 hours. Officials put the death toll at between 21 and 23, most of them police officers, with around 100 others injured. Eight of the attackers were killed in the clearance operation.
Ittihadul Mujahideen Pakistan, a group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is based in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the assault.
On Sunday, six members of the security forces, two of them officers, died in an exchange of fire between a convoy and militants in Hangu district. Eight militants were killed, the military said.
The strikes mark the latest flare-up in a confrontation that has hardened since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 2021. Pakistan has recorded a resurgence in militant violence since then and accuses the Taliban of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which Islamabad officially labels “Fitna al-Khawarij”. The Taliban deny allowing Afghan soil to be used for attacks on Pakistan.
“It is a matter of grave concern that Afghanistan continues to remain a hub of terrorism,” the information ministry said. “The threat to Pakistan emanates from Afghanistan.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, condemned what he called “crime and aggression” by “the invading Pakistani army”. He said a woman and two men had been killed in Kunar, and that a house and a shop had been hit in Paktika, where no casualties were reported. He accused Pakistan’s military leadership of trying to divert attention from its own security failures.
“Afghans will give an appropriate response to this aggression,” he said.
Islamabad has framed the raids as part of Ghazab lil Haq, a counter-terrorism campaign it launched on 26 February after an unprovoked firing by Afghan Taliban forces across the border. The ministry said the campaign, run under a wider security framework known as Azm-i-Istehkam, would continue “at full pace”.
It was the latest in a series of Pakistani strikes this year. In late June, Pakistan struck targets in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar in response to a wave of attacks, including one on a Rangers camp in Karachi, with the officials putting the number of militants killed at 25. Earlier that month, strikes along the border killed 26 militants, according to officials. Islamabad also struck camps of the TTP and Islamic State Khorasan Province earlier in the year after a wave of attacks that included a suicide bombing in Islamabad.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to break the deadlock. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said meaningful progress with Kabul depended on “concrete and verifiable” Taliban action against the TTP, and that while it welcomed China’s engagement, outside facilitation could not substitute for such action.
Figures from the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) show that mainland Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, excluding the merged districts, recorded 54 militant attacks in August, up from 36 in July, an increase of 50 per cent. Deaths from those attacks fell from 69 to 44, and injuries from 96 to 70, a decrease of 27 per cent.
July was the deadliest month of 2026, according to the think tank, with at least 606 people killed. Balochistan remained the worst-affected province in August, though its overall death toll fell by 48 percent.
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