ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghan forces attacked Pakistani military positions along the border early on Tuesday, triggering intense clashes that left 67 Afghan troops and one Pakistani soldier dead, officials in Islamabad said as cross-border fighting between the two countries entered its fifth day.
The Taliban defense ministry in Kabul, the Afghan capital, rejected Pakistan’s claim. A ministry spokesman said Afghan forces in the past 24 hours repelled Pakistani attacks, destroying about a dozen military posts and killing four Pakistani soldiers.
The latest Afghan-Pakistan escalation erupted last week with Afghanistan launching attacks on Thursday in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous weekend. Since then, Pakistan has carried out operations along the border and declared it was in an “open war” with Afghanistan, alarming the international community.
On Tuesday, Pakistan said Afghan forces attacked Pakistan’s military in two sections of the two countries’ border.
It said 16 locations were attacked along the southern part of the border, in the southwestern districts of Qilla Saifullah, Nushki and Chaman in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Pakistani troops killed 27 members of the Afghan forces there and “successfully repelled these multiple attacks,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said.
Tarar said on X that another wave of attacks hit 25 locations along the northern part of the border, in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Pakistani troops killed 40 members of the Afghan security forces. The spokesman did not say where the Pakistani soldier was killed.
In Kabul, defense ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khawarazmi slammed the Islamabad statements as “baseless.”
The border area — where militant groups, inc …