Kabul –
Death toll from Pakistani military airstrikes in Khost and Kunar provinces, Afghanistan east, has soared. At least now the death toll is 47 people.
The tension on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has increased since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last year. Pakistan accuses militant groups of carrying out routine attacks from Afghanistan.
The Taliban denies harboring Pakistani militants, but are also angered by the fence Islamabad has erected along their 2,700-kilometre (1,600-mile) border.
Tensions between the two neighbors deepened after an air strike in the early hours of Saturday that Afghan officials said was carried out by a Pakistani military helicopter.
Afghan officials said the airstrikes hit homes in Khost and Kunar along the border. Pakistani troops are said to have fired rockets.
“Forty-one civilians, mainly women and children, were killed and 22 injured in an air strike by Pakistani forces near the Durand line in Khost province,” Shabir Ahmad Osmani, director of information and culture in Khost, told AFP.
Najibullah, an official at the Ministry of Virtue Promotion and Prevention of Crime in Khost said the death toll in the province was 48.
“24 people died from one family itself,” he said.
Jamshid, a tribal leader from Khost also confirmed that more than 40 people had died.
“I went yesterday with some people to donate blood to treat the injured in the Khost attack,” Jamshid said.
Another government official in Khost said he saw 42 graves of dead people. He also added that several people were missing.
TOLO News, Afghanistan’s leading private TV channel, continues to broadcast gruesome footage of splattered blood and the rubble of homes damaged in the attack in Khost.
(fas/fas)
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