GENEVA::The United Nations rights chief said Friday that 56 Afghan civilians had been killed — nearly half of them children — since hostilities with neighboring Pakistan intensified last week.

“I plead with all parties to bring an end to the conflict, and to prioritize helping those experiencing extreme hardship,” Volker Turk said in a statement.

The neighbors have clashed along the frontier since February 26, when Afghanistan launched a border offensive in retaliation for Pakistani air strikes.

Islamabad has hit back along the border and with fresh air strikes, bombing multiple sites including the former US air base at Bagram, the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar.

Turk said that since the intensification of hostilities, “56 civilians, including 24 children and six women, have been killed.”

“A further 129 people, including 41 children and 31 women, have been injured,” he said.

And since the start of the year, the numbers are even higher, with 69 civilians killed in Afghanistan and 141 injured, he said.

Pakistan insists it has not killed any civilians in the conflict. Casualty claims from both sides are difficult to verify independently.

The UN refugee agency said Thursday that around 115,000 Afghans and 3,000 people in Pakistan had been displaced by the fighting in the past week.

“Civilians on both sides of the border are now having to flee from air strikes, heavy artillery fire, mortar shelling and gunfire,” Turk said.

He lamented that a new wave of violence was affecting people “whose lives have been tormented by violence and misery for so long.”

He highlighted that over two million Afghans had returned to Afghanistan since Pakistan started to implement its “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” in September 2023.

And nearly as many were believed to remain in Pakistan, “where many face hardship and constant fear of arrest and deportation,” he said.

“As a result of the violence, humanitarian assistance is unable to reach many of those desperately in need. This is piling misery on misery,” the rights chief said.

He called on “the Pakistan military and Afghan de facto security forces to end immediately their fighting, and to prioritize helping the millions who depend on aid.”