Pakistan defends attacks on Afghanistan, denies civilian casualties

Washington — Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Pashto article.

Pakistan’s government has defended its attacks on Afghanistan as an act of “self-defense” and rejected killing Afghan civilians. Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, in a statement Monday posted on X, said that its attacks are “directed against terrorists and their logistical support based in Afghanistan,” and rejected the civilian casualties “attributed” to the attacks.

Pakistani forces and the Afghan Taliban have recently clashed along the border, and Pakistan also has carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban called Pakistan’s airstrikes in Afghanistan “an act of aggression and crime in violation of all accepted principles.”

The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan said in September that it had documented more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries from cross-border attacks in Afghanistan so far in 2026.

Pakistan accuses the Taliban of sheltering the militant group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has taken responsibility for attacks inside Pakistan.

The Afghan Taliban publicly deny harboring any militant group, but a U.N. report, released in August, said that the Taliban continue to support TTP.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told VOA in an email statement in July that Pakistan has the “right to defend against terrorist attacks.”

“The Pakistani people have suffered greatly at the hands of terrorists,” the unnamed spokesperson said at the time.

The U.N. said that the Pakistani Taliban’s attacks inside Pakistan have increased.

Pakistan has said that the attacks inside Pakistan have resulted in more than 3,500 casualties so far in 2026.

Ismail Khan, an editor at Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, told VOA that both sides blame each other, and relations between the two countries have deteriorated. “Borders are closed [between the two countries]. There is no trade and no negotiation is underway,” he said.

Khan added that some countries, including China, Turkey and Qatar, have tried to get Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban to resume negotiations, but those efforts have not yielded results.

“In the end, both countries have to negotiate and find a way out,” he said.

But Khan said the situation is likely to continue for now because both “Pakistan and Afghanistan are not ready to negotiate.”