Fierce fighting has broken out in at least five locations, with multiple soldiers killed, in a flare-up of violence between Pakistani and Afghan forces near the two countries' tense border.
Pakistani security sources near the border region early on October 12 confirmed to RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that three Pakistani soldiers and one civilian were killed and five soldiers were injured in the fighting and a subsequent response by the Pakistan military.
Some civilians on the Pakistani side of the border were leaving the region for safer locations, according to security sources.
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Pakistani sources said several Taliban posts had been destroyed inside Afghanistan during its retaliatory actions. Casualties on the Afghan side were not immediately known.
In a prompt and intense response, Pakistani forces effectively targeted several Afghan border posts, security officials confirmed to Dawn news.
Security sources told Dawnn that Pakistan was using artillery, tanks, and light and heavy weapons in its actions.
Afghanistans Taliban rulers confirmed that its forces carried out successful retaliatory operations along the Durand Line against the centers of Pakistani security forces, in response to repeated violations of Afghanistans airspace and territory.
The 2,600-kilometer Afghan-Pakistan border is often referred to as the colonial-era Durand Line, which set the international border in 1893.
TheTaliban Defense Ministrysaid the operation ended by midnight local time.
However, Taliban officials in Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost, and Helmand Provinces near the Pakistan border said that some clashes were ongoing.
A senior Pakistani official in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province official told AFP that "this evening, Taliban forces began using weapons. We fired first light and then heavy artillery at four points along the border."
The official added that Pakistani forces "shot down three Afghanquadcopterssuspected of carrying explosives. Intense fighting continues."
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Reports from the border region cannot immediately be verified.
The sides have fallen out over the Afghan Taliban's alleged sheltering of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an extremist group that has waged a deadly insurgency against Islamabad for years.
The Taliban, which returned to power in August 2021 as international troops left Afghanistan, denies it is protecting the TTP inside the country.
On October 9, two senior members of the extremist group were killed in unprecedented Pakistani drone strikes in the Afghan capital, sources told RFE/RLs Radio Mashaal, marking a major escalation of tensions between the two side.
The target of the strikes in Kabul late on October 9 was Noor Wali Mehsud, the leader of the TTP, which is also known as the Pakistani Taliban, a Pakistani security official and a member of the TTP said.
