Taliban says it hit back at Pakistan after air strikes in Afghanistan kill 8

Afghanistan’s Taliban said on Monday that Pakistan carried out two air strikes on its territory, killing five women and three children, and it fired heavy weapons at Pakistani forces along the border in retaliation.

The neighbouring countries have traded blame over who is responsible for a recent spate of Islamist militant attacks in Pakistan. Pakistan says the attacks were launched from Afghan soil; Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban deny this.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan does not allow anyone to compromise security by using Afghan territory,” Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban administration, said in a statement. The strikes killed five women and three children in the eastern border provinces of Khost and Paktika, he added.

In a statement, the Pakistani foreign office said Pakistan had carried out “intelligence-based anti-terrorist operations in the border regions inside Afghanistan”.

It did not specify what kind of operations they were but said they targeted members the Hafiz Gulf Bahadur militant group after an attack on a military post in Pakistan on Saturday.

In a separate statement, the Taliban defence ministry said its security forces had targeted Pakistani troops at the border in response to the air strikes.

via Reuters