KARACHI: Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and intelligence chief will be traveling to Doha today, Saturday, to hold talks with representatives of the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani state media reported, hours after another Pakistani airstrike in Afghanistan.
The fierce battles between the two neighbors along their long, porous border broke out last Saturday and have led to the deaths of dozens of people on both sides, with Pakistan carrying out airstrikes in Kandahar and Kabul before a two-day truce that expired Friday evening.
Pakistan “conducted precision aerial strikes” in Afghan border areas on Friday, a security official said, adding that it targeted the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Friday’s strikes killed three Afghan cricketers among 10 people, authorities said.
The latest strikes ended 48 hours of calm between the two countries which was earlier reportedly extended for talks between Pakistani and Afghan officials in the Qatari capital of Doha.
“Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and Intelligence Chief Lt General Asim Malik are scheduled to depart for Doha on Saturday,” the state-run Pakistan TV reported. “Taliban delegation is expected to be of equivalent seniority.”
Islamabad said the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group had been involved in a suicide bombing and gun attack at a military camp in the North Waziristan district that borders Afghanistan, which left seven Pakistani paramilitary troops dead on Friday.
The Afghanistan Cricket Board said that three players who were in the region for a tournament were killed by Friday’s airstrikes, revising down an earlier toll of eight.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump offered to help end hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“I do understand that Pakistan attacked or there is an attack going on with Afghanistan,” he said in a meeting with the Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
“That’s an easy one for me to solve if I have to solve it. In the meantime, I have to run the USA. But I love solving wars.”
The clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan broke out amid Islamabad’s claims that the Afghan Taliban had been sheltering banned militant groups like the TTP and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which carry out cross-border attacks against Pakistan. Kabul denies the allegations.
