Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan carried out precision air and drone strikes on 10 locations in Afghanistan early on Thursday, describing them as sites used to launch and store the drones that entered Pakistani airspace a day earlier (Express Tribune; Associated Press).
What Pakistan says happened
Tarar announced the strikes on X. He said they were “deliberate, precise, calibrated and proportionate” and directed at “identified military objectives directly linked to the attempted attacks against Pakistan”.
The attacks he refers to took place on 23 September. Pakistani officials say eight drones launched from Afghan territory crossed into Pakistan — four brought down near Torkham, four in mountainous country near Kohat. Officials say all eight were neutralised before causing damage, and that Afghan forces also fired mortars and heavy weapons at Pakistani border posts.
No casualty figure has been given for the strikes.
Note the wording, because it changed
This newspaper reported on 21 September that the government announced “calibrated air strikes against terrorist hideouts near the Afghan border” — and this column observed at the time that the announcement said border region, not inside Afghanistan, and that the distinction was not an accident.
Thursday’s announcement does not use the earlier formulation. It says 10 locations in Afghanistan.
That is a change in what the Pakistani state is willing to say out loud about where its aircraft are operating, and it happened in three days.
Kabul denies it
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected Pakistan’s account. He denied that the drone attacks took place at all, and said: “These shameless acts of aggression and attacks by the Pakistani military regime will be met with an appropriate response.”
He used similar language after the strikes of 20-21 September, promising “appropriate retaliation” then too.
The casualty dispute from the last round is unresolved
Pakistan said the earlier strikes killed 28 fighters. Afghan authorities put the toll at three civilians killed and four wounded. The UN mission in Afghanistan confirmed that there were civilian casualties, without endorsing either side’s numbers.
That gap has not been closed, and it is worth holding in view now. Two governments have given irreconcilable accounts of what happened on the ground four days ago, in an area where independent reporting is effectively impossible, and both are now making claims about a second round.
What prompted the first round
The strikes of 20-21 September followed the attack on the Old Police Lines in Kohat on 18 September, which began with a suicide car bombing during Friday prayers at the compound mosque and ran into a 22-hour clearance operation. The final toll was 31 dead and 103 wounded, with eight attackers killed. Ittihadul Mujahideen Pakistan, led by the Afghanistan-based Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed it.
Thursday’s statement also named the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and what the government calls Fitna al-Khawarij as responsible for earlier attacks inside Pakistan.
Where this now stands
Pakistan told the Security Council on 16 September that it would act in self-defence “as and when needed”. It struck on the 20th and 21st. It was attacked by drones on the 23rd, by its own account. It struck again on the 24th, and this time said the targets were in Afghanistan.
That is a sequence with its own momentum. Kabul has twice promised a response and has so far not described one. Parliament has not debated any of it.
[Image: File photo — PAF J-10C jets at a national day parade rehearsal, March 2024. AFP via The Express Tribune]
