UN says Pakistan airstrikes killed 13 civilians in Afghanistan

Pakistan said its latest airstrikes along the Afghanistan border destroyed militant targets and killed 26 fighters. The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said the strikes in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces killed 13 civilians and wounded 10 others, deepening the credibility gap between Islamabad’s military justification and the civilian toll recorded on the Afghan side.

UNAMA said it documented the deaths overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, with casualties mainly children and women. Afghan authorities gave a similar account, saying the dead included 11 children, one woman and one elderly man. A tribal elder in Khost said one strike hit a shepherd’s home after midnight, killing 10 people in a village and leaving the family with no connection to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Pakistan said the operation was aimed at militant camps and hideouts after recent attacks inside the country. Pakistani officials said four targets were destroyed, including a training centre, a hideout and an ammunition cache. The Taliban government has rejected Pakistan’s repeated claims that Afghan territory shelters TTP fighters, while Islamabad says the group is separate from but allied with the Taliban authorities that seized power in 2021 after the U.S.-led withdrawal.

UNAMA called for de-escalation, a durable ceasefire, protection of civilians, the reopening of border crossings for humanitarian assistance and direct dialogue to resolve differences. Those appeals underscored how fragile the frontier has become. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border has been closed for months, choking trade and transportation and stranding thousands of people on both sides.

The new strikes followed a month of relative calm after months of escalating violence that has killed hundreds since February. Earlier cross-border fighting was even bloodier. UNAMA said it verified 185 civilian casualties in Afghanistan between February 26 and March 5, including 56 killed and 129 injured, with 55 percent of the victims women and children. That total exceeded the civilian fatalities it had confirmed in the October 10-17 cross-border hostilities last year.

UNAMA also said 372 Afghan civilians were killed and 397 injured in the first three months of 2026 in cross-border violence, with more than half of the deaths linked to air raids on a drug rehabilitation facility in Kabul. With sporadic fighting still flaring along the 2,600-kilometre border, the latest strike shows how quickly tactical claims of counterterrorism can turn into a wider regional crisis, especially where independent verification remains limited under Taliban rule.