ISLAMABAD: Three Pakistani soldiers were killed after militants in Afghanistan fired heavy weapons across the border onto a Pakistani military outpost overnight, the Pakistani military said Saturday, in the latest violence to rattle the volatile region.
A firefight ensued with the militants firing toward the army post in the North Waziristan district and several assailants were killed, the Pakistani military's media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said in a statement.
The development comes as Afghanistan reels from a series of explosions in recent days, including Friday's bombing of a mosque in northern Kunduz province that killed 33 people, including several students of an adjacent religious school or madrassa.
“Pakistan strongly condemns the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for activities against Pakistan and expects that the Afghan Government will not allow conduct of such activities, in future,” the ISPR said in the statement.
The Pakistani government condemned the cross-border attack, saying such incidents were "unacceptable."
"[We] strongly condemn the terrorist attack from across the border," Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said in a statement. "Such incidents are unacceptable and there is a need to take immediate measures for their prevention."
Earlier this month, seven Pakistani troops were killed in an ambush in the country's turbulent northwest, after which Pakistan retaliated with bombing raids inside Afghanistan that killed dozens of people.
The United Nations Education Fund (UNICEF) confirmed 20 children were killed in the strikes in Afghanistan's Khost and Kunar that border Pakistan.
Afghan authorities had blamed Pakistani military of launching pre-dawn attacks in its territories which, they said, had claimed the lives of several civilians. Afghan interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi also summoned Pakistan's envoy in Kabul to officially protest the "military violations."
Pakistan's foreign ministry had said militants based in Afghanistan had intensified their activities and targeted its security personnel in the last couple of days despite Islamabad's repeated requests to Kabul to secure the border regions.