Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram as fighting continues

Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram as border fighting enters fourth day

Afghanistan said it thwarted an attempted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base, the former U.S. military installation north of Kabul, as fighting between the neighbors extended into a fourth day. The Afghan government also described continued cross-border clashes in multiple provinces and pushed back on Pakistan’s account of the fighting.

Afghan police in Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets entered Afghan airspace around 5 a.m. Sunday and “attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base.” The statement said Afghan forces responded using “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and managed to thwart the attack.

Pakistan did not immediately respond through its military or government to Afghanistan’s claims regarding the attempted strike or the broader fighting, according to the report. In Kabul, Afghanistan’s government rejected Pakistan’s claims as well, with Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat describing reports as “baseless.”

The current fighting began after Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday. Pakistan said its airstrike targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, while Afghanistan said only civilians were killed.

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us” after the Thursday attack. The report said the fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, and that international concern has increased because militants—including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group—have had a presence in the region and have tried to resurface.

Afghan officials said combat continued overnight and into Sunday in border areas. The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said anti-aircraft missiles were used from Jalalabad and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning. Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said Afghan forces launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces, adding that two Pakistani drones were shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers were killed.

Fitrat said Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian after it hit a home in Paktia province. There was no immediate response to those claims from Pakistani officials, and the report said both sides have accused each other of inflicting heavy losses while putting their own casualty numbers far lower.

The report also said that in the Zhob sector near Kandahar province, two Pakistani security officials speaking anonymously stated that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer (12-square-mile) area that they said they seized during fighting Friday. Afghanistan has continued to dispute Pakistan’s account of events.

Bagram Air Base, once the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, was taken over by the Taliban when they swept across the country in the wake of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021. The report said U.S. President Donald Trump suggested last year that he wanted to reestablish a U.S. presence at the base.

Fighting earlier this year and in previous periods has included efforts to halt the violence. The report said border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants before a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended intense fighting, and that later rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, with the two sides trading fire at times since then.

The report described the broader dispute as tied to accusations of cross-border militant links: Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militants that stage attacks against it and of allying with its archrival India, while Afghanistan denies providing a safe haven for TTP, a militant group described as separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership.