Pakistani airstrikes killed 46 people in eastern Afghanistan, Taliban claim

Pakistan's airstrikes on eastern Afghanistan killed 46 people, mostly women and children, a Taliban government official said Wednesday.

Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for the Taliban, said that six people were also wounded in the Paktika province bordering Pakistan.

The Taliban government denounced the attack, saying on Tuesday that most of the victims were refugees from the Waziristan region and promising retaliation.

Pakistani security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with regulations, told AP that Tuesday's operation was to dismantle a training facility and kill insurgents in the province.

Meanwhile, in a statement, Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed that 50 people, including 27 women and children, have died in the strikes.

The TTP is a separate group but also a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Pakistan has not commented on the strikes. However, on Wednesday, the Pakistani military said security forces killed 13 insurgents in an intelligence-based operation in South Waziristan in Pakistan, a district located along the border with Paktika.

The strikes are likely to spike tensions between the two countries further. In March, Pakistan said intelligence-based strikes took place in the border regions inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan has seen innumerable militant attacks in the past two decades, but there has been an uptick in recent months. The latest was this weekend when at least 16 Pakistani soldiers were killed when TTP attacked a checkpoint in the country's northwest.

Pakistani officials have accused the Taliban of not doing enough to combat militant activity across the shared border, a charge the Afghan Taliban government denies, saying it does not allow anyone to carry out attacks against any country.