Pakistan air strikes target Taliban rebel camps in Afghanistan after 7 killed in terrorist attack

Islamabad has not yet commented on today’s air strikes, but spokesmen of the TTP and Afghan interim government said the attacks hit targets in camps occupied by hundreds of Pakistani insurgents and their families.

One of the Pakistani air strikes destroyed the home of a ranking TTP commander, Abdullah Shah, in Paktika’s Bermal district.

Seven members of his family were reportedly killed, but the TTP said Shah was in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district at the time.

Another person was killed in Sepera district of Khost.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Afghan interim government, condemned the Pakistani attacks as a “reckless action and violation of Afghanistan’s territory”.

He warned that the air strikes could “lead to consequences which are beyond Pakistan’s control”.

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Following the air strikes, Taliban forces opened fire on Pakistani soldiers manning border posts, leading to intermittent skirmishes.

Pakistan responded similarly to an unprecedented Iranian cross-border attack in January, when both countries conducted air strikes against ethnic Baloch rebels based in each other’s territory.

After Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes against Iran “to re-establish deterrence, responding to attacks emanating from Afghanistan was expected”, said Abdul Basit, a senior research associate of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Whether the air strikes would deter the TTP and change the Afghan Taliban regime’s “strategic calculus of hosting the group remains to be seen”, he said, but added that Pakistan “will increase the cost for the Taliban regime”.