The Foreign Office (FO) on Thursday said that Pakistan had carried out an intelligence-based operation against terrorists in “border areas based on threats to Pakistani citizens’ security”, referring to an airstrike conducted on Tuesday night.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been strained due to frequent border skirmishes and Islamabad repeatedly demanding Kabul to take action against the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for using Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan. Kabul denies the allegations.
The FO spokesperson’s statement — the first formal word by the government on the matter — comes after Pakistan carried out air strikes in the neighbouring country on Tuesday, which security officials said targeted several suspected terrorists.
Pakistan’s security officials late on Tuesday night had said that fighter jets bombed four locations, said to be TTP camps, in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province, targeting and neutralising several suspected terrorists.
Subsequently, the Afghan Taliban regime lodged a strong protest with Islamabad over an airstrike, warning that Afghanistan’s territorial sovereignty was the red line for the ruling Islamic Emirate.
In a written statement issued in response to a Dawn.com query, the FO said: “Our security and law enforcement personal conduct operation in border areas to protect the people of Pakistan from terrorist groups. These counterterrorism operations are carefully selected and based on accurate intelligence.”
Responding to queries during a media briefing in Islamabad earlier today, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said: “The intelligence-based operation was conducted by Pakistan in Afghanistan’s border areas.”
