LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar left for Saudi Arabia on Friday to perform Umrah, an Islamic pilgrimage to Makkah that can be undertaken at any time of the year.
It will be his second journey to the holy Muslim city this year since he also performed Umrah with his family in February.
“The chief minister is not going there in his official capacity,” Muhammad Rafiullah, a public relations officer at the CM Secretariat, told Arab News. “An additional chief secretary of the provincial administration along with another officer will also accompany him. All of them are going there in their private capacity and will spend money from their own pocket.”
The chief minister reached the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore without protocol, received his boarding card, and waited in the queue with other passengers.
“He will stay in Muscat and then go to Madinah. He will pray for the solidarity of the country as well as for the freedom of the people of Kashmir,” he added.
Sources say that while Buzdar is going to the Kingdom in his private capacity, he desires to participate in the washing ceremony of the Holy Kaaba.
“He desires to be among the lucky individuals who are going to participate in the ceremony,” another official at the CM office told Arab News, requesting not to be named. “He will spend that entire day in the House of God.”
Punjab chief minister leaves for Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah
Punjab chief minister leaves for Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah
- CM Usman Buzdar is undertaking the journey in private capacity
- Buzdar desires to participate in the washing ceremony of Holy Kaaba
Pakistan, Afghanistan trade heavy casualty claims, battlefield losses as cross-border fighting escalates
- Pakistan says 133 Afghan Taliban killed in counter-strikes, Kabul says 55 Pakistani soldiers dead
- Both sides report destruction, capture of military posts as escalation deepens, signaling widening conflict
Islamabad/Karachi: Pakistan and Afghanistan traded claims of heavy battlefield losses early Friday as cross-border fighting intensified along their shared frontier, marking the most serious escalation in hostilities between the bitter neighbors in recent months.
The fighting follows Pakistani airstrikes earlier this week targeting what Islamabad said were Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Daesh militant camps inside Afghanistan. Pakistan said those strikes killed more than 100 militants, while Kabul said women and children were killed and condemned the attacks as violations of Afghan sovereignty.
With both governments now announcing retaliatory operations and publishing sharply conflicting casualty figures, the confrontation signals a rapid deterioration in relations between the two countries.
Pakistani officials said the latest strikes were in response to what they described as unprovoked firing by Afghan forces along multiple sectors of the border late Thursday. The Pakistani prime minister’s spokesman Mosharraf Zaidi said at 0345 hours Friday counter-strikes were continuing.
“A total of 133 Afghan Taliban are confirmed killed, more than 200 wounded,” Zaidi said in an X update. “Twenty seven (27) Afghan Taliban posts have been destroyed, and nine (9) have been captured.”
He added that strikes had targeted military positions in Kabul, Paktia and Kandahar, and that corps headquarters, brigade headquarters, ammunition depots, logistics bases and other installations had been destroyed.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar described the military action as “Operation Wrath for the Sake of Truth,” saying Pakistan’s “effective counter operations are ongoing.”
Defense Minister Khawaja Asif adopted sharply escalatory language on X, declaring: “Now it is open war between us and you.”
On the Afghan side, Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid accused Pakistan of bombing major cities.
“The cowardly Pakistani army has bombed some places in Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktia. Praise be to God, no one was harmed,” Mujahid said on X.
In a separate statement, Afghanistan’s Ministry of National Defense said its forces had conducted retaliatory operations along the shared border.
The ministry claimed 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed, two garrisons and 19 posts captured and military equipment seized. It said eight Afghan fighters were killed and 11 wounded in the clashes, and alleged that 13 civilians were injured in Nangarhar.
Pakistani officials said no Pakistani posts had been damaged or captured.
None of the casualty figures or battlefield claims from either side could be independently verified.
Cross-border violence has intensified in recent weeks, with Pakistan blaming a surge in suicide bombings and militant attacks on insurgents it says are based in Afghanistan. Kabul denies providing safe havens to anti-Pakistan militant groups.
The latest clashes mark the third major escalation between the neighbors in less than a year. Similar Pakistani strikes last year triggered weeklong fighting before Qatar, Türkiye and other regional actors mediated a ceasefire in October.
The 2,600-kilometer (1,600-mile) frontier, a key trade and transit corridor linking Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan and onward to Central Asia, has faced repeated closures amid tensions, disrupting commerce and humanitarian movement. Trade and movement of people between the two nations has remained closed since October 2025.
The confrontation also unfolds against a backdrop of growing friction over Afghanistan’s regional alignments. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Taliban authorities of allowing Indian influence to expand in Afghanistan, an allegation Kabul has rejected.
Pakistan’s defense minister Asif renewed that accusation on Friday, saying the Taliban government had turned Afghanistan into “a colony of India.”
Islamabad has long accused India of using Afghan territory to support anti-Pakistan militant groups, a charge New Delhi denies.
