• Pakistani diplomat handed strong protest note; special envoy continues meetings with top Afghan Taliban officials
• Banned groups attempt to ‘debunk’ claims of militant casualties, post videos purportedly showing ‘slain men’ alive and well
PESHAWAR: The Afghan Taliban regime on Wednesday lodged a strong protest with Islamabad over an air strike, carried out by Pakistani jets near the Pak-Afghan border the previous day, warning that Afghanistan’s territorial sovereignty was the red line for the ruling Islamic Emirate, Kabul’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The foreign ministry of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affaires in the afternoon and handed a strong protest note over Pakistani military planes bombings in district Bermal in Paktika province near the border just across Durand Line,” the statement said.
It condemned “aggression by Pakistani military” at a time when an emissary of the country’s government was in Kabul for talks with officials of the Afghan government. The killing of common citizens by “certain quarters” was an attempt to create distrust in relations between the two countries, it added.
The statement from the foreign ministry followed a relatively stronger-worded statement from its defence ministry, which claimed that most of those killed and wounded included common citizens, as well as refugees from Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal region.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office or the military’s media arm, Inter Services Public Relations, has so far offered no formal word on the air strikes in Paktika, which sits across the Durand Line from the volatile tribal districts of North and South Waziristan.
However, the AFP news agency quoted a senior Pakistan security official as saying that the strikes were launched against “terrorist hideouts” using jets and drones, claiming that at least 20 militants were killed in the attack.
The strikes came the day Pakistan’s special emissary, Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq and his team, met interim Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and Foreign Minister Muhammad Muttaqi to discuss bilateral matters, including Pakistan’s security concerns regarding terror groups operating from Afghan soil.
The visit, which came after a year-long hiatus, was widely seen an attempt to revive diplomatic engagements between the two countries that are at odds over the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose presence in Afghanistan has been a bone of contention between Islamabad and Kabul.
