A senior Taliban official has said that the truce between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been broken after Islamabad allegedly carried out strikes inside the country.
According to Afghan media reports, Pakistan allegedly bombed several civilian homes in Paktika province on Friday evening, resulting in casualties.
The spokesman of the Paktika Security Command told the Khama Press news agency that the Pakistani military regime raided the home of a butcher in the “Khana Dar” village of the Arghon district of Paktika, resulting in deaths and injuries to civilians.
Pakistan airstrikes also targeted at least two more locations in Afghanistan.
Khama Press further reported that Afghanistan forces have initiated retaliatory attacks against Pakistan.
The incident happened hours after Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to extend their 48-hour ceasefire until the conclusion of talks in Doha.
A Pakistani delegation had already arrived in Doha while an Afghan delegation was expected to reach the Qatari capital on Saturday, said the sources, who did not want to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Kabul has instructed its forces to maintain a ceasefire as long as Pakistan refrained from any attack, Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Ariana News.
Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed on a temporary truce on Wednesday paused days of fierce fighting that killed dozens and wounded hundreds.
Once allies, Islamabad and Kabul engaged in fierce ground fighting, and Pakistan also launched airstrikes across their contested frontier before they reached a 48-hour ceasefire.
Militant violence in Pakistan has been a major irritant in its relationship with the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Kabul after the departure of US-led forces in 2021.
The latest conflict between the two countries was triggered after Islamabad demanded that Kabul rein in militants who had stepped up attacks in Pakistan, saying they operated from havens in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban has denied allegations that it has given haven to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as Pakistan Taliban militants, to attack Islamabad.
The Afghan Taliban also accused the Pakistani military of spreading misinformation about Afghanistan, provoking border tensions, and sheltering ISIS-linked militants to undermine its stability and sovereignty.
Meanwhile, seven Pakistani soldiers were killed in a suicide attack near the Afghanistan border on Friday.
The soldiers came under attack in a Pakistani military camp in North Waziristan district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and 13 were also wounded, five security officials said.
While one militant rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into the boundary wall of a fort that served as a military camp, two others tried to get into the facility and were shot dead, they said.
Six militants were killed in the suicide attack, the office of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement, without providing details on the number of soldiers killed.