By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan summoned the Afghan chargé d’affaires on Monday and issued a formal protest over a weekend attack on a paramilitary facility in Karachi, hours after the government confirmed it had launched ground and air strikes against militant targets across the Afghan border, killing 29 fighters.
Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said the Afghan diplomat was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and presented with a strong demarche following Saturday night’s assault on a Pakistan Rangers (Sindh) compound in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar area, which left three personnel dead. He said Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul, Ubaidur Rehman Nizamani, delivered a parallel protest to the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs the same day.
“These demarches were issued in light of the fact that Afghan nationals, including one apprehended alive, participated in this attack, proving yet again that Afghan soil and Afghan nationals continue to be used to orchestrate terrorist attacks inside Pakistan,” Andrabi said in a statement responding to media queries.
After one of the attackers was identified as an Afghan national, Pakistan launched ground and air strikes against targets along the border on Sunday night. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the following night that at least 29 militants had been killed in the strikes on their hideouts.
On Monday, Tarar shared video footage of the strikes on the social media platform X, saying security forces had hit militant camps and safe havens in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces. “Under Operation Ghazb Lil Haq, security forces precisely struck terrorist camps and safe havens of Jamaatul Ahrar and Fitna al-Khwarij in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar, eliminating terrorists and destroying weapons and ammunition stockpiles on night 28/29 June,” he wrote. Fitna al Khawarij is the term Pakistani officials use to designate members of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Tarar said Pakistan had credible intelligence linking the militants struck in the operation to the attack on the Rangers compound in Karachi. “Pakistan believes that whenever Afghan soil will be used to carry out terrorist attacks, Islamabad has a right to respond,” he said. He added that the strikes had targeted Jamaatul Ahrar and Fitna al-Khwarij safe havens, including sites used to store ammunition.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, known as UNAMA, confirmed 28 casualties from the Pakistani air strikes, a figure close to but not identical to the toll given by Pakistani officials.
Security officials said the man captured alive after the Karachi attack identified himself as Usman Ali and said he had traveled to Pakistan from Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, roughly a week before the assault. According to the sources, he said he belonged to Jamaatul Ahrar, named the group’s Afghanistan-based commander as Ahrar Moulvi, and said he and his fellow attackers had received training inside Afghanistan.
Jamaatul Ahrar, according to information published on the United Nations Security Council’s website, is headquartered in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. The group was founded in 2014 by Abdul Wali, also known as Omar Khalid Khorasani, after his split from the Pakistani Taliban. The two factions reconciled in 2024, though a rift between them resurfaced in media reports in January 2025. No formal split followed, but Jamaatul Ahrar received no senior positions when the Pakistani Taliban announced its 2025 leadership appointments the following month.
Pakistan has experienced a marked rise in militant violence since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, and Islamabad has repeatedly pressed the Taliban administration to dismantle militant sanctuaries it says operate on Afghan soil. Pakistani officials say those calls have largely gone unheeded.
The Foreign Office’s previous demarche to the Afghan chargé d’affaires came in May, following a suicide bombing at the Fateh Khel police post in Bannu that killed 15 police officers.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
