Pakistan is in ‘open war’ with Afghanistan, its defense minister says

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan and Afghanistan traded cross-border attacks overnight, government officials from both countries confirmed to NBC News on Friday, alleging heavy losses on both sides as Pakistan’s defense minister declared “open war” between the two South Asian nations.

Tensions between the two countries, which share a 1,600-mile border, have been simmering for months as they struggle to maintain a Qatar-mediated ceasefire they reached in October, with occasional cross-border skirmishes. Pakistan, which is struggling with a surge in militant attacks since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, says the attackers are using Afghanistan as a base.

The Taliban, which returned to power with the U.S. withdrawal, denies harboring militants.

The fighting threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are trying to remobilize.

The latest violence began Thursday night when the Taliban launched what it called retaliatory attacks on military installations in northwest Pakistan. Residents and government and military officials in Pakistan’s border areas said heavy fighting started around 8 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET), causing panic among residents.

“We had to leave our homes in the middle of the night” as Afghan forces fired rockets and mortar shells from across the border, said Dilbar Khan Afridi, a tribesman fleeing the Tirah Valley, a mountainous region in the Khyber district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Hours later, Pakistan said it had struck military targets in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as well as Kandahar and Paktia provinces.

“Pakistani counterstrikes against targets in Afghanistan continue,” a Pakistani government spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, said early Friday on X. Earlier, he said Pakistan had conducted the strikes “in response to unprovoked Afghan attacks.”

There were conflicting claims from the two sides about the damage and casualties they inflicted on each other.

Zaidi said 133 Afghan Taliban had been killed and more than 200 had been wounded, with “many more casualties” estimated. He did not specify where the casualties occurred. He also said 27 Afghan Taliban posts had been destroyed and nine had been captured.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said there were no confirmed casualties on the Afghanistan side.

He said that Afghanistan’s earlier attack on Pakistan killed as many as 55 Pakistani soldiers, some of whose bodies were taken to Afghanistan, and that others were captured alive. About two dozen Pakistani army posts were captured or destroyed, he said. Zaidi denied the claims.

The Taliban said the attacks Thursday night were in retaliation for Pakistan’s deadly strikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan said that those attacks targeted militants and that at least 70 were killed, while Afghanistan said dozens of civilians were killed, including women and children.

Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Friday that since they regained power in 2021, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan into a “proxy for India” — Pakistan’s archrival — and made it a gathering place for militants who started “exporting terrorism.”

“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Asif said on X. “Now it is open war between us and you.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to protect civilians and “to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, also called for a peaceful resolution.

“This is a terrible dynamic that must stop,” he said on X. “Innocent Afghans and Pakistanis are getting injured or killed.”