ISLAMABAD: Pakistan rejected Afghan allegations of civilian casualties from its airstrikes on Monday and urged Kabul to stop militants from launching cross-border attacks.
The Foreign Office dismissed claims that Pakistani military operations had killed or injured Afghan civilians. It maintained that its forces targeted militant positions and logistical bases.
An Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesperson recently claimed that Pakistani strikes had killed or injured 1,119 civilians since late 2021. Islamabad described the allegations as “baseless and unsubstantiated”.
The Foreign Office accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of allowing militant organisations to operate from its territory. It named the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) among those groups.
Pakistan claimed attacks originating from Afghan territory had caused more than 3,500 casualties in 2026. Officials maintained that Pakistani military operations followed the principles of self-defence, necessity and proportionality.
They rejected suggestions that the country’s actions deliberately targeted civilians. The ministry called on the international community to hold the Taliban administration accountable for preventing cross-border militancy.
Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has rejected Islamabad’s accusations. He accused Pakistani authorities of blaming Afghanistan for their domestic security problems.
Mujahid maintained that Kabul neither wanted nor had the capacity to destabilize neighboring countries. Separately, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting denied allegations that it was arming or recruiting Afghan nationals to fight the Taliban.
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Former US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had raised those allegations on X on Friday without presenting supporting evidence.
Pakistan urged Kabul on Saturday to take verifiable action against militant organisations rather than dismiss its security concerns.
A United Nations Security Council monitoring report covering December 2025 to June 2026 linked continued Taliban support for the TTP to increasingly frequent and deadly attacks in Pakistan. It also recorded some initial Afghan efforts to restrain the group.
