Afghanistan’s Taliban government on July 1 directed drone strikes against targets in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, marking the first known instance of the Taliban launching aerial weapons across the border during the months-long armed conflict between the two neighbours (Al Jazeera; Eastern Herald). Two people were injured near a government school in Saranan, a town in Balochistan’s border belt.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations said the military “neutralised” all four drones using “sophisticated countermeasures” before they reached their intended targets. The ISPR described the aircraft as “rudimentary” and accused the Taliban of launching them in support of “terrorist outfits” — Islamabad’s standard framing for militant groups it says operate from Afghan soil with Taliban protection.
Afghanistan’s defence ministry offered a different account. It said its air force had struck “a Daesh centre” in Saranan, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province affiliate that both Kabul and Islamabad accuse each other of tolerating. The competing claims could not be independently verified.
Escalation trajectory
The drone operation came four days after a June 27 attack on a Pakistan Rangers compound in Karachi that Islamabad attributed to militants with Afghan connections — a claim Kabul denied. The border conflict has killed hundreds since February, when Pakistan began striking Taliban positions in eastern Afghanistan under Operation Ghazab lil Haq, a campaign launched after a series of mass-casualty attacks on Pakistani soil that Islamabad attributed to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan fighters sheltered in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s March 2026 airstrike on what it described as a militant training facility in Kabul — which the Taliban said killed more than 100 civilians at a drug rehabilitation centre — produced one of the sharpest diplomatic ruptures of the year. Since then, Chinese-mediated talks have produced no lasting ceasefire.
The July 1 strikes signal that Afghanistan is prepared to use air assets offensively inside Pakistani territory, a significant threshold in the conflict. Pakistan has maintained air superiority throughout the campaign; the Taliban’s use of drone platforms, however rudimentary, introduces a new dimension to the exchange (Balochistan Pulse). Pakistan has not announced a formal response to the July 1 strikes as of the time of publication.
