Taliban

KABUL / ISLAMABAD — July 1, 2026

In the village of Mandokhail in Afghanistan’s Paktia province, rescue came with a second explosion. When an elderly man and a child were killed in the first Pakistani strike, their neighbours rushed to help — only to be caught in another bomb.

An eyewitness, Qayum Khan, described the sequence in messages sent to CBS News via social media: “We immediately ran toward the house to help, but then another bomb struck. Those who had reached the house first to rescue the injured were also caught in the Pakistan bombing. I stood there in shock for a few moments.”

The pattern of that single night encapsulates the deepening catastrophe on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — and the widening gulf between Islamabad’s security imperatives and Kabul’s demands for sovereignty.

The Strikes and Their Toll

Pakistani forces’ ground operations and strikes killed at least 36 civilians in Afghanistan overnight Sunday and wounded more than 160 others, Afghan officials said Monday, as tensions between the neighbours escalated. One Afghan official said the attacks would be met with retaliation. Pakistan said the operations were launched in response to militant attacks across Pakistan. Security forces carried out a ground operation along the border late Sunday, followed by strikes against militant hideouts and safe havens, killing 29 fighters, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said.

The Taliban’s deputy spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said Pakistani forces targeted a home in Paktia’s Chamkani district, killing an older man and a child, while other family members were wounded. When residents gathered to rescue people, the area was struck again, killing 28 villagers and wounding 158. Six people, mostly women and children, were killed in a village in Giyan district, Paktika province, when another home was struck. A civilian home in Kunar province was also hit, causing no casualties but killing some 30 livestock.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan independently confirmed that at least 28 civilians were killed and 49 others were wounded in the strikes, including women and children, noting the figures were preliminary and could increase.

Pakistan, for its part, offered a sharply different account.

Information Minister Tarar shared three videos on social media that he said showed projectiles striking sprawling camps and safe havens of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and Fitna al-Khwarij in Afghanistan’s Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces, claiming the overnight strikes killed “terrorists” and destroyed weapons and ammunition stockpiles.

The Trigger: Karachi

The Pakistani security operation followed a militant attack targeting the regional headquarters of the paramilitary Rangers in Karachi that killed three soldiers. Security forces killed three attackers and arrested another assailant, identified as a wounded Afghan national. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks targeting police and security forces in recent years. Authorities have blamed the Pakistani Taliban — known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP — and allied militant groups for most of the violence. The Pakistani Taliban are separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban that returned to power in 2021.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harbouring militants who carry out deadly attacks inside Pakistan, especially the TTP. Kabul denies the charge.

Diplomats Summoned, Retaliation Threatened

On Monday, Afghanistan and Pakistan summoned each other’s top diplomats to protest the attacks. Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry deputy spokesperson Zia Ahmad Takal accused Islamabad of repeatedly blaming Afghanistan for security incidents inside Pakistan without “credible evidence.”

Afghanistan condemned the strikes as a “cowardly act of aggression” and an “act of brutality.” At least one Afghan official warned that the attacks would be met with retaliation.

A Conflict That Won’t Be Bombed Away

Sunday’s cross-border strikes and ground operation came less than three weeks after Pakistan’s military launched airstrikes on what it said were militant hideouts in Afghanistan, ending about a month of relative calm following what Islamabad had described as an “open war” between the neighbouring countries, despite international efforts to broker a lasting peace. Multiple rounds of talks have failed to secure a lasting ceasefire.

The escalation follows months of tit-for-tat military action. Hundreds of people have been killed in cross-border fighting since February, when Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes after Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghan territory. China hosted the two sides in April, and Beijing later said Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed not to escalate their conflict and to explore a solution — an agreement that appears to have evaporated overnight.

Analysts are increasingly sceptical that military pressure is achieving anything.

The UN recorded at least 372 Afghan civilian deaths and 397 injuries in the first three months of 2026 alone — including dozens killed in a missile strike by Pakistan that hit a drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul in March. Journalist Sami Yousafzai, an expert on Afghan affairs, told Al Jazeera that the civilian toll was reshaping public opinion inside Afghanistan. “Many Afghans now believe that Pakistan’s strikes are changing the conversation around the Taliban regime. Even Afghans who were critical of Taliban policies — on women’s education, for instance — are now saying: Set that aside, let us talk about Pakistani aggression.”

Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, described Pakistan’s posture as “maximum pressure built on an unproven premise.” “The underlying assumption is that a Taliban crackdown will produce a reduction in violence inside Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “Whether that premise is correct, valid, and sound is genuinely up for debate.”

Analysts warn military pressure alone cannot contain a threat from armed groups that has reached Pakistan’s cities.

Global Implications

The conflict sits at a volatile intersection of regional power struggles. India has been accused by Pakistan of backing the TTP — a charge New Delhi flatly denies.

India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal called Pakistan’s statements “baseless allegations,” adding that Pakistan should “look inwards, take credible action against the terror infrastructure on its territory.”

With the Taliban government in Kabul internationally isolated, and Pakistan facing a domestic terror surge, both governments face pressure to act decisively — yet neither has a clear path to a durable peace. As the summer advances on a bruised borderland, the civilian populations of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces remain caught between two states that can agree on little except that the other is to blame.