ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday that Pakistan will not tolerate “terrorism” from across the border, days after the South Asian country conducted airstrikes in neighboring Afghanistan to take out alleged militant targets.
Pakistan confirmed this week it had conducted airstrikes during the wee hours on Monday in the “border regions inside Afghanistan” to target militants of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group. Islamabad says militant outfits attack Pakistani security forces and civilians from sanctuaries in Afghanistan, a charge Kabul denies.
Afghanistan said eight people, including five women and three children, were killed in the airstrikes. The Taliban government said its border forces had fired on their Pakistani counterparts with heavy weapons in retaliation.
The operation, the sharpest escalation in already deteriorating ties between the neighbors, came after a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden truck into a military post in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing seven soldiers. The Pakistan Army, defense minister and president vowed retaliation in separate statements.
“Terrorism that is taking place from across the border, we cannot tolerate it anymore,” Sharif told members of the cabinet in a meeting. “Pakistan’s borders are a red line against terrorism.”
Sharif clarified that Pakistan wants peaceful relations with its neighbors and to promote bilateral trade and business relations with them.
“But unfortunately if the neighboring country’s soil will be used for terrorism, then this is not acceptable,” he said.
Sharif urged neighboring countries to formulate a joint strategy with Pakistan to combat militancy, adding that it would help establish regional peace and eliminate poverty.
Militant attacks have risen sharply in Pakistan in recent months, many of them claimed by the Pakistani Taliban or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP are a separate group but are allies of the Afghanistan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as the US and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened TTP, Pakistan says, whose top leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Army on Monday said the recent wave of militancy in the country had the “full support and assistance” of Afghanistan.
“With the help of the Afghan Taliban and the supply of modern weapons, there has been an increase in the incidents of terrorism in Pakistan,” the army said in a statement.
Pakistan says won’t tolerate cross-border ‘terrorism,’ days after airstrikes on Afghanistan
https://arab.news/2w3fp
Pakistan says won’t tolerate cross-border ‘terrorism,’ days after airstrikes on Afghanistan
- Pakistan conducted airstrikes against alleged militant targets in Afghanistan earlier this week
- Sharif invites neighboring countries to formulate joint strategy to combat “terrorism” in region
No casualties as blast derails Jaffar Express train in Pakistan’s south
- Passengers were stranded and railway staffers were clearing the track after blast, official says
- In March 2025, separatist militants hijacked the same train with hundreds of passengers aboard
QUETTA: A blast hit Jaffar Express and derailed four carriages of the passenger train in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday, officials said, with no casualties reported.
The blast occurred at the Abad railway station when the Peshawar-bound train was on its way to Sindh’s Sukkur city from Quetta, according to Pakistan Railways’ Quetta Division controller Muhammad Kashif.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, but passenger trains have often been targeted by Baloch separatist outfits in the restive Balochistan province that borders Sindh.
“Four bogies of the train were derailed due to the intensity of the explosion,” Kashif told Arab News. “No casualty was reported in the latest attack on passenger train.”
Another railway employee, who was aboard the train and requested anonymity, said the train was heading toward Sukkur from Jacobabad when they heard the powerful explosion, which derailed power van among four bogies.
“A small piece of the railway track has been destroyed,” he said, adding that passengers were now standing outside the train and railway staffers were busy clearing the track.
In March last year, fighters belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatist group had stormed Jaffar Express with hundreds of passengers on board and took them hostage. The military had rescued them after an hours-long operation that left 33 militants, 23 soldiers, three railway staff and five passengers dead.
The passenger train, which runs between Balochistan’s provincial capital of Quetta and Peshawar in the country’s northwest, had been targeted in at least four bomb attacks last year since the March hijacking, according to an Arab News tally.
Pakistan Railways says it has beefed up security arrangements for passenger trains in the province and increased the number of paramilitary troops on Jaffar Express since the hijacking in March, but militants have continued to target them in the restive region.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwestern province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, is the site of a decades-long insurgency waged by Baloch separatist groups who often attack security forces and foreigners, and kidnap government officials.
The separatists accuse the central government of stealing the region’s resources to fund development elsewhere in the country. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan.
