The attacks come days after the Taliban promised retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan.
Afghan Taliban forces targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan days after Pakistani aircraft attacked, the Afghan Defense Ministry said Airstrikes within the country.
The defense ministry’s statement on Saturday did not directly say that Pakistan had been hit, but said the attacks occurred “beyond the ‘hypothetical line'” – a term Afghan authorities use for the existing border with Pakistan long controversial.
“Several points beyond the hypothetical line, which served as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters organizing and coordinating attacks in Afghanistan, were attacked in retaliation from the southeast of the country,” the ministry said.
Asked whether the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi said: “We do not consider it the territory of Pakistan, so we cannot confirm the territory, but it was on the other side of the hypothetical border.”
Afghanistan has for decades rejected the border known as the Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities in the 19th century through the mountainous and often lawless tribal belt between present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
No information was given on victims or specific target areas. The Pakistan military’s public relations department and a Foreign Ministry spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, a security source told AFP on Saturday that at least one Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and seven others injured in cross-border exchanges of fire with Afghan forces.
Sporadic clashes broke out overnight at the border between Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Afghanistan’s Khost province, including with heavy weapons, officials from both countries said.
The incidents came after Afghan Taliban authorities accused Pakistan of killing 46 people, mostly women and children, in airstrikes near the border this week.
Islamabad said it had targeted militant hideouts along the border, while Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday of retaliation.
Relations between neighbors are strained. Pakistan says several attacks on its territory were launched from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which shares a common ideology with its Afghan counterparts, claimed last week that there had been an attack on an army outpost near the border with Afghanistan in which 16 soldiers were killed, according to Pakistan.
“We want good relations with them (Afghanistan), but TTP should be stopped from killing our innocent people,” Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a cabinet address on Friday.
“That’s our red line.”
