The attacks come days after the Taliban pledged to respond to Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan.
The Afghan Ministry of Defense said that Afghan Taliban forces targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan, days after Pakistani aircraft carried out aerial bombardments inside the country.
The Defense Department statement on Saturday did not directly specify that Pakistan was struck, but said the attacks were carried out “beyond the virtual line” — an expression used by Afghan authorities to refer to the long-disputed border with Pakistan. .
The ministry said: “Several points outside the virtual line were targeted, serving as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, in retaliation against the southeastern direction of the country.”
Asked whether the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarazmi said: “We do not consider it to be Pakistani territory, and therefore we cannot confirm the area, but it was on the other side of the hypothetical line.”
Afghanistan has for decades rejected the border known as the Durand Line, which was drawn by British colonial authorities in the nineteenth century across the often lawless mountainous tribal belt between what is now known as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
No details were provided about the victims or specific target areas. The Pakistani Army’s public relations wing and Foreign Ministry spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Al Jazeera’s Abid Hussain, reporting from Islamabad on Saturday afternoon, said there had been no official response from Pakistani authorities to the attacks.
A security source told AFP that at least one Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and seven others were wounded in an exchange of fire across the border with Afghan forces.
Officials from both countries said that sporadic clashes, including with heavy weapons, broke out overnight between border forces on the border between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan and Khost province in Afghanistan.
These incidents come after the Afghan Taliban authorities accused Pakistan of killing 46 people, most of them women and children, in air strikes near the border this week.
Islamabad said it targeted militant hideouts along the border, while Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday that they would respond.
Relations between the two countries are tense, as Pakistan says that many of the attacks on its territory were launched from Afghan territory – an accusation that the Afghan Taliban movement denies.
The Pakistani Taliban – which shares a common ideology with its Afghan counterpart – last week claimed responsibility for a raid on an army site near the border with Afghanistan, which Pakistan said resulted in the deaths of 16 soldiers.
“We want good relations with them (Afghanistan), but the Pakistani Taliban should be prevented from killing our innocent people,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a Cabinet speech on Friday.
“This is our red line.”
Al Jazeera’s Hussain explained that Pakistan had hoped to establish good relations with the Taliban after the group took control of Afghanistan in 2021 – and controlled TTP attacks in Pakistan.
But the relationship deteriorated amid escalating violence.
Hussain said that more than 950 Pakistanis, including security personnel and civilians, were killed in 2024 alone.
