Afghan-Pakistan border shelling kills civilians

• Taliban forces kill 6 civilians and injure at least 17 others in an “unprovoked”.
• Pakistan asked Afghan forces halt establishing a roadblock.

Afghan Taliban forces killed six civilians in Pakistan and injured at least 17 others in an “unprovoked” bombing and gunfire attack on a border town on Sunday, Pakistan says.

The Pakistani military denounced the strike at Chaman on Sunday, claiming that the Afghan side fired “indiscriminately.”

Forces from Pakistan reacted. A single Afghan soldier died.

What precipitated the altercation at the main border crossing is unknown.

However, since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan last year, tensions between the neighboring nations have increased on security-related matters.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the Afghanistan action “deserve[d] the strongest condemnation”.

According to news agency’s citation of Afghan security officials, the incident took place as a result of Pakistan’s demand that Afghan border forces halt erecting a checkpoint on their side of the border.

According to unnamed Afghan government officials quoted by the news agency, tensions erupted after Afghan soldiers attempted to cut a portion of a border barrier.

Both the Taliban, who seized control last year, and the previous Afghan government have opposed Pakistan’s construction of a large fence along the border since 2017.

Pictures taken on Sunday from the border town showed persons who had been hurt by artillery fire as well as the burning wreckage of destroyed cars and harmed roadways.

“A mortar shell landed and caused a huge fireball. After that I lost consciousness and don’t know what happened,” one hospitalized victim told news organization.

Ten individuals were injured, and the governor of Kandahar reported that one Taliban member had died.

After the incident, the crossing was shut down, but according to police, it reopened later on Sunday after representatives from both sides met.

Thousands of people utilize the Chaman crossing, one of the main transit gates between Afghanistan and Pakistan, every day. Along this route, there have been previous conflicts. Following the murder of a Pakistani security guard by a gunman last month, it was shut down for eight days.

According to Pakistani officials, strikes carried out by Pakistani militant organizations from Afghan territory have increased since the Taliban seized power.

They have also charged the new Taliban administration of providing cover for those organizations in Afghanistan. The Taliban dispute this.

Two weeks ago, gunmen assaulted Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in what Islamabad characterized as an attempt to assassinate its top diplomat.

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