EDITOR’S NOTE: The civilian toll has now been independently confirmed by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA): three civilians killed — a man, a woman and a girl — and four civilians injured in the Kunar strike. (Afghan officials had described the dead as one woman and two men; UNAMA’s victim breakdown differs slightly.) Pakistan’s Information Ministry says the strikes killed at least 28 militants, a claim Afghan officials dispute and no UN body has verified.
Pakistani fighter jets carried out airstrikes in several areas of eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of Monday, Sept. 21, according to Tolo News as carried by Reuters. In Kunar province’s Nurgal district, an airstrike on a house killed three members of the same family — one woman and two men — and wounded four others, two women and two men, according to Afghan officials cited by Saptashwa TV and Devdiscourse. Afghan authorities described all the victims as local civilian residents.
The operation extended to Paktika province, where two locations in Barmal district — the Rakha and Torkandi areas — were targeted. A house and a local shop were damaged or destroyed, with no casualties reported there, according to India Post and Devdiscourse.
Pakistani sources said Monday’s operation targeted militant positions and claimed that militants were killed, but those claims could not be independently verified, according to Saptashwa TV. Pakistan’s Information Ministry later said the strikes killed at least 28 militants in the border region, with one security official saying two Afghan provinces were targeted; the military did not immediately comment, according to TBS News. Afghan officials insist the areas struck were civilian and reject the militant-death claims.
Reuters reported the strikes came two days after a police facility in northwest Pakistan was attacked — a sequence suggesting a retaliatory response, though Pakistani officials had not publicly confirmed that link at publication time. Local media reported that the preceding violence in Pakistan’s northwest — a militant attack on a police facility in Kohat on Friday killed at least 24, and a separate exchange of fire on Sunday killed 6 Pakistani soldiers and 8 militants in Hangu, according to an army statement carried by AFP.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban administration of failing to stop armed groups, especially the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), from operating on Afghan soil — a claim Kabul rejects, according to India Post.
Ahead of the strikes, Taliban chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Al Arabiya English that Kabul would defend its territory against any Pakistani military action and rejected Pakistan’s allegations, according to Orbit Prime News. Mujahid condemned the strikes on X as “crime and aggression,” writing: “Last night, the invading Pakistani army bombarded civilian areas of Afghanistan in Kunar and Paktika provinces… We condemn this aggression and oppression and consider it a repetition of crimes,” according to India Post. He warned: “Afghans will give an appropriate response to this aggression, God willing.”
Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires in Kabul and handed him a protest note over the violation of Afghan airspace and the airstrikes on civilian areas in Kunar and Paktika provinces, according to Wesal TV and TBS News.
The attack threatens to reignite fighting between the two neighbors, who engaged in their worst conflict in years in February, Reuters reported. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has said Pakistan and the Taliban government are in a state of “open armed confrontation,” according to AzerNews.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded 399 civilian casualties — 57 killed and 342 injured — from cross-border violence between April 1 and June 30, 2026, with airstrikes and ground engagements identified as leading causes, according to NewsPoint citing UNAMA.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned Pakistan’s attack on Afghanistan: “Such instances of aggression on a sovereign neighbour is something that goes against the regional peace and security… and it is yet again another occasion of aggression from the Pakistani side,” the ministry said in a statement, reaffirming its support for the Afghan side, InShorts reported.
Sources: Reuters, India Post, Devdiscourse, Saptashwa TV, AzerNews, The Daily Jagran, InShorts
