Current News Articles | Afghanistan peace campaign

Ben Roberts-Smith arrested: former Australian soldier charged with five war crime murders in Afghanistan

April 9, 2026 Current News Articles

Roberts-Smith previously failed in his attempt to sue three newspapers which published allegations he murdered unarmed civilians and bullied comrades

Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, has been arrested at Sydney airport and charged with war crimes.

The Australian federal police and the Office of the Special Investigator announced details of the investigation in Sydney on Tuesday after midday.

They said Roberts-Smith was expected to be charged with “five counts of war crime – murder”, in relation to three incidents. The maximum penalty for the offence is life imprisonment.

He was subsequently charged and was due to appear in bail court on Wednesday. He spent Tuesday night in a cell at Silverwater prison where it was understood he had a cell to himself.

The Victoria Cross recipient was previously found in a defamation suit – using the civil standard of the balance of probabilities – to have murdered unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) in Afghanistan. Roberts-Smith has denied any wrongdoing.

The three incidents allegedly involved Afghan nationals being shot dead by Roberts-Smith, or a subordinate under his control, while he was present, the AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, said on Tuesday.

Guardian Australia understands the charges relate to allegations that Roberts-Smith was involved in the deaths of two Afghan males at a location known as Whiskey 108 in Kakarak in 2009, and the death of a man named Ali Jan in 2012 in Darwan. The third incident relates to the deaths of two civilians at Syahchow in 2012.

The federal court found to the lower civil standard that Roberts-Smith kicked Ali Jan in the chest, sending him falling backwards over a cliff before he landed on the ground. The court found that Roberts-Smith then ordered another soldier to shoot him dead.

Barrett, who did not name Roberts-Smith, said it would be alleged that the 47-year-old was involved in the death of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012 in circumstances that constituted war crimes.

“It will be alleged the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan,” she said.

“It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed.”

Barrett confirmed Roberts-Smith was arrested at the domestic terminal after travelling from Brisbane to Sydney on Tuesday morning. She would not comment when asked whether it was suspected he was due to board an international flight.\

The director of investigations at the Office of the Special Investigator, Ross Barnett, said the probe started in 2021.

He said it was a “careful and professional investigation under challenging circumstances … the seriousness of these charges has deserved nothing less”.

Barnett added that, given the difficulty in even speaking to people in Afghanistan, those affected by the alleged murders may not be aware there had been an arrest.

“The challenge for investigators is that … we are 9,000km [away]. The challenge for investigators is that because we can’t go to the country, we don’t have access to the crime scene. So we don’t have photographs, site plans, measurements, the recovery of projectiles, or blood spatter analysis.

“All of the things that we would normally get at a crime scene. There’s no postmortem. Therefore, there’s no official cause of death. So there are a lot of practical challenges that confront the investigators.”

Roberts-Smith, once lionised as the country’s most decorated Afghanistan veteran, sued three newspapers over allegations he committed war crimes, murdered unarmed civilians and bullied his comrades.

In the long-running and expensive defamation trial, which he lost, a judge found on the balance of probabilities that he committed four murders while serving in the Australian military.

Roberts-Smith appealed to the full bench of the federal court but lost, and the high court refused to hear a further appeal.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, refused to comment on Tuesday.

“I have no intention of prejudicing a matter that clearly is a legal matter, and that’s before the courts, and any comment would do so,” the prime minister told reporters in Canberra.

Roberts-Smith, a former SAS corporal, was awarded the Victoria Cross for “most conspicuous gallantry” during the battle of Tizak in 2010.

He was named father of the year and served as chair of the government’s Australia Day council.

But in 2017 and 2018, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times published a series of articles that alleged he engaged in war crimes, including murdering civilians, and ordering subordinate soldiers under his command to execute civilians in so-called “blooding” incidents.

Roberts-Smith sued the newspapers, telling the court their stories portrayed him as a criminal “who broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement” and “disgraced” his country and its army.

The newspapers defended their reporting as true, including its allegations that Roberts-Smith was complicit in murder.

The most high-profile allegation proven in court was that Roberts-Smith, on a mission to the southern Afghan village of Darwan in 2012, marched a handcuffed Ali Jan to the edge of a 10-metre high precipice that dropped to a dry riverbed below.

Ali Jan survived the fall, though he was badly injured, and was trying to get to his feet when the Australian soldiers, having walked down a diagonal footpad cut across the cliff, reached him.

Roberts-Smith ordered a soldier under his command, known before the court as Person 11, to shoot Ali Jan dead, an order that was followed, the court found. Ali Jan’s body was then dragged to a nearby field.

The other major allegation concerned a raid on a bombed-out compound code-named Whiskey 108 in 2009.

Two men were found hiding in the tunnel: one, an elderly man, the other a younger man with a prosthetic leg. The men came out of the tunnel unarmed and surrendered.

Justice Anthony Besanko found that Roberts-Smith ordered a junior soldier on his patrol to execute the older man, before he forcibly manhandled the disabled man outside the walls of the compound, where he threw him to the ground and fired his para minimi machine gun into his prone body, killing him.

The disabled man’s prosthetic leg was later souvenired by another soldier and used by Australian SAS troops as a macabre celebratory drinking vessel at their on-base bar, the Fat Ladies’ Arms.

The Australian War Memorial on Tuesday said it would “review the wording of the interpretive panel” associated with a display of Roberts-Smith’s uniform, equipment and medals.

“The memorial will continue to monitor developments and consider updates as appropriate,” it said in a statement.

Former Australian SAS soldier Oliver Schulz was charged in early 2023 with murdering an Afghan man in a war crime.

UN says Afghanistan floods worsen shelter crisis for 4.2 million people

April 9, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

April 8, 2026

Recent floods in Afghanistan have worsened an already severe shelter crisis, with 4.2 million people now needing emergency housing support, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) said on Wednesday.

The agency urged immediate action, saying safe housing is a basic human need as repeated climate-related disasters continue to destroy fragile homes and deepen humanitarian vulnerability across the country.

In a message marking the scale of the crisis, UN-Habitat said “every family deserves a safe place to live,” highlighting the urgent pressure on communities already affected by poverty, displacement and weak infrastructure.

Taliban authorities said more than 958 homes were completely destroyed and 4,155 others partially damaged in the latest wave of floods and heavy rains across several provinces.

Much of Afghanistan has been hit by severe rainfall and flash flooding over the past two weeks, with aid groups warning that shelter losses are compounding wider risks linked to displacement, disease and lack of services.

Afghanistan already faces one of the region’s most acute housing emergencies, with millions of returnees, displaced families and urban poor living in fragile or informal shelters highly exposed to floods and other climate shocks.

UN-Habitat says decades of conflict, underinvestment, rapid urbanisation and worsening climate impacts have left large parts of the country dangerously unprepared for recurring disasters such as floods, drought and earthquakes.

The latest floods have once again exposed Afghanistan’s housing vulnerability, with aid agencies warning that without rapid support, thousands more families could be left without safe shelter.

China says Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to explore a ‘comprehensive solution’ to conflict

April 9, 2026 Current News Articles

By The Associated Press

April 8, 2026

BEIJING — China’s government said Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed not to escalate their conflict and to “explore a comprehensive solution” after several weeks of cross-border fighting between the two countries that has killed hundreds of people.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday that after seven days of peace talks in the western Chinese city of Urumqi under China mediation, all the parties also agreed to keep the dialogue.

“The three parties agreed to explore a comprehensive solution to the issues in the relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and clarified the core and priority issues that need to be addressed,” Mao said during the daily briefing in Beijing.

She added that they acknowledged that “terrorism is the core issue affecting the relationship.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan said that they won’t “take actions that would escalate or complicate the situation.”

The talks began last week in Urumqi at the invitation of China, in an effort to stop the conflict that began between the two countries in February.

Pakistan, which declared it was in “open war” with its neighbor, has also carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan, including in the capital Kabul.

Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the talks had been constructive.

The United Nations’ office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that the conflict had displaced 94,000 people overall, while 100,000 people in two Afghan districts near the border have been completely cut off by the fighting since February.

Even during the talks, Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of carrying out shelling across its border on several occasions.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of providing a safe haven to militants who carry out deadly attacks inside Pakistan, especially the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. Kabul denies the charge.

Pakistan Says It Hit a Military Target. Investigations Suggest It Was a Rehab Center.

April 7, 2026 Current News Articles

By Elian Peltier and Safiullah Padshah

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan

The New York Times

April 7, 2026

Inside a dark cargo container on a recent drizzly morning in Kabul, two dozen people stared at pictures of hundreds of bodies scrolling by on a projector, hoping to catch sight of a missing relative.

Brothers, wives or parents often asked a morgue employee to return to the previous photograph, desperate for an identifiable detail, even though many bodies were barely recognizable.

“I can’t see this again,” said Rokhshana Shah Mohammadi, 60, as she stepped out and into the morgue’s courtyard, falling into the arms of a relative. “I need to know what happened to my son.”

With Pakistan and Afghanistan in open conflict, on March 16 at least two Pakistani airstrikes hit a drug rehabilitation facility in the Afghan capital in the deadliest single attack on civilians in Afghanistan since the Taliban regained power in 2021.

Pakistan’s military says that the strike hit an ammunition site and a drone storage facility, and was launched as part of its military campaign against the Taliban government, which it accuses of supporting terrorist groups.

But Taliban officials say more than 400 people were killed, a death toll that international humanitarian organizations operating in Afghanistan say is credible. The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan told The New York Times that it had so far confirmed at least 269 civilian deaths and 122 injured, but that the death toll was likely higher.

The center, called Omid, or “Hope” in the Dari dialect, was well known among local communities and had been covered in news reports and documentaries.

“With the technology they have now, they must know that addicts or civilians were there,” said Ali Mohammad, 34, a patient at Omid who was recovering from his injuries at a Kabul hospital. “So why did they bomb it?”

Our reporting and preliminary investigations by the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch and other international bodies have reached the same conclusion: Pakistan hit the wrong target — a facility housing civilians and tucked in a military compound.

“I do not know what they kept there,” Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesman, said in an interview on Pakistani television. “They were not our target.”

A few hours after the strikes, we saw dozens of bodies on the site; later, we saw hundreds of pictures of the bodies collected from Omid at a local morgue.

The drug center had been operating for a decade on the site of a former NATO base. The Taliban carry out military activities in parts of the compound, some as close as 300 feet from the center, with little more than a blast wall shielding the facility.

The strikes abruptly ended the lives of husbands, brothers and sons who struggled with depression, grief or the shame of unemployment, their families said. Many said their relatives had ebbed for years between erratic behaviors, domestic violence and glimmers of hope shattered by relapses.

The last time Abida Stanikzai saw her husband, Zakaria, he told her he would soon come home, she said. Previous episodes of addiction had made Zakaria so violent that the family subdued him at times by tying his wrists and ankles.

Ms. Stanikzai looked at the photos hoping to recognize her husband, to no avail, then went inside the morgue to look at the remains of a single foot, which she believed may have belonged to him.

Their 15-year-old son, Muhammad, held his mother’s purse as he waited in silence in the courtyard.

Since early 2023, the Taliban have rounded up thousands of drug users and placed them in facilities like Omid, where they face unmedicated, forced withdrawal in conditions that foreign officials have described as arbitrary detention.

Abdul Sabir Husseini, 36, had become addicted to heroin and hashish nearly a decade ago after he lost a son to leukemia, according to his brother, Abdul Latif Husseini. He would often borrow a motorcycle and drive to his son’s grave, Mr. Husseini said. In recent months, his violent relapses affecting neighbors, his wife and three other children pushed the family to send him to Omid.

“He threw himself at me and asked me to take care of his sons,” Mr. Husseini said about Abdul Sabir on a recent morning in the family home. A poster of his brother was folded next to him. “He told me, ‘I have no one else. I’ll be back healthy.’”

In the aftermath of the strike, Pakistani officials suggested that the drug rehabilitation center was something else.

“If they had addicts there, it was likely a training facility for bombers,” said Lt. Gen. Chaudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesman. “Not all drug addicts are suicide bombers, but all suicide bombers are drug addicts.”

Pakistani officials have not provided evidence backing that claim.

“Pakistani authorities need to carry out an impartial investigation to determine why it hit a drug treatment center filled with civilians and who should be held to account,” said Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The previous U.S.-allied government in Afghanistan had opened Omid in 2016, with 2,000 beds on the former NATO base known as Camp Phoenix. After the Taliban took control of the country, and the base, in 2021, they continued running the center under the Ministry of Interior. (A second drug center, run by the Ministry of Health, also sits at Camp Phoenix, 1,000 feet from the Omid facility. It was not hit in the strikes.)

Employees of the ministry guarded the camp, according to interviews with survivors of the strike, but most of the chores, from running the kitchen to calling people for prayer, rested on the patients.

One of the Pakistani strikes hit a building that served as a dining hall, kitchen and prayer room, according to patients and guards. A Pakistani military official said at least two other strikes hit two adjacent installations that were used to store drone parts, though he provided no evidence.

Even after an international outcry over the civilian deaths from the strike, Pakistan has maintained that it hit a legitimate military target. It has publicly said that secondary detonations proved it hit an ammunition depot.

Nearly a week after the strikes, fires still smoldered on-site and body parts lay in puddles of blood.

In the burned kitchens, large ovens were covered in soot, and rotting potatoes floated in buckets. A deflated volleyball and a sewing machine sat abandoned in a nearby building, while dozens of syringes and boxes of gloves littered the ground of what Taliban officials described as an emergency ward.

Insinuations by the Pakistani military that the Omid center served as a training center for suicide bombers have angered survivors and families of victims.

Abdul Wasi Noori lost his 26-year-old son, Hekmatullah, a father of two young children who ran a supermarket near the family’s apartment. Mr. Noori said Hekmatullah became addicted two years ago to a popular synthetic drug known as Tablet K.

Hekmatullah had grown verbally abusive and violent with relatives, said Mr. Noori, the owner of a construction company. “But he was not a criminal,” he added, referring to Pakistan’s accusations.

“I tried so hard to give him a new life,” Mr. Noori said. “Now we won’t see him again.”

Still, the Pakistani strikes have shed new light on the Taliban’s use of military facilities to house civilians. Two days before the strikes in Kabul, Pakistan hit an empty military building adjacent to a drug rehabilitation center in the southern province of Kandahar. No civilian casualties were reported.

In Kabul, the Taliban carry out military activities less than 300 feet from the center, according to six officials who were briefed on their operations. Two of them said drone parts were being stored and assembled on-site. They requested anonymity because they weren’t allowed to publicly discuss the military activities of the Taliban.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.

But the drug center sites were clearly separated from the military site by blast walls, the officials said, and there was no evidence of military activity in the part of the compound hit by the Pakistani strikes.

One weapons and detonations expert interviewed by The Times said footage of the strike shared by the Pakistani military appeared to show secondary blasts — suggesting the potential presence of explosives or ammunition on site — but that their nature remained unclear.

But Human Rights Watch said in a statement that it “saw no indication of secondary detonations caused by bulk explosives, propellants, or ammunition with tracer elements typically associated with ammunition depots.” Two other experts from a private consultancy and an international body, who requested anonymity to discuss ongoing investigations into the strikes, said they saw no evidence of secondary detonations either.

The Taliban have buried nearly 100 victims in mass graves over the past few weeks, including many who were not recognizable or had not been claimed by families.

Sakina Arif, 42, watched as the coffins were taken down from ambulances at one of the mass funerals held on a hill overlooking Kabul. She was overcome with grief at the thought of her missing 20-year-old son, Muhammad Arif. She had brought him beef kebabs at Omid a day before the strike, and had been unable to find him at the morgue or at hospitals.

As groups of men carried the coffins to a mosque, Ms. Arif wailed and said, “Which coffin are you in, my son? Come and call out to your mother.”

Kiana Hayeri, Yaqoob Akbary, Zia ur-Rehman and Ataullah Omar contributed reporting.

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.

UNAMA Says Mines and Explosives Kill or Injure 50 People Monthly in Afghanistan

April 5, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

April 4, 2026

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says around 50 people are killed or injured every month in mine-related and explosive ordnance incidents across Afghanistan, warning that children continue to bear the brunt of the country’s long-running contamination crisis.

In a statement issued for International Day for Mine Awareness on April 4, UNAMA said nearly 80% of the monthly casualties are children.

UNAMA said Afghanistan has the third-highest explosive ordnance casualty rate in the world, with most of the incidents linked not to newly planted devices but to unexploded ordnance and abandoned munitions left behind by decades of war. Nick Pond, head of UNAMA’s Mine Action Section, said about 90% of casualties in Afghanistan are caused by such remnants, many of which remain buried in former military sites, open land and even urban areas.

According to the UN mission, more than 1,000 square kilometres of land in Afghanistan are known to be contaminated, while nearly 3 million people, around 900 schools and more than 200 health facilities are located within one kilometre of explosive hazards. UNAMA said the true scale could be even larger because many districts have still not been fully surveyed.

Pond said one of the biggest obstacles to faster clearance is a severe funding shortage, despite improved access in many parts of the country and broad support for demining work. He said stronger funding would allow contaminated land to be cleared more quickly so families can safely return to farming, schooling and daily life without the threat of hidden explosives.

Afghanistan remains one of the countries most heavily affected by the legacy of war, with mines and unexploded bombs still scattered across farmland, roads, villages and former battle zones after more than four decades of conflict. UN-linked reporting says 471 casualties were recorded in 2025 alone, many of them children and women.

The crisis is especially dangerous for children, who are often injured while playing outdoors, collecting scrap metal or walking through contaminated areas. Aid agencies say the contamination also blocks agriculture, delays reconstruction and deepens hardship in already vulnerable communities.

UNAMA said sustained international support is urgently needed if Afghanistan is to reduce daily casualties and free communities from one of the deadliest legacies of its past wars.

Deadly Earthquake and Floods Worsen Afghanistan’s Troubles

April 5, 2026 Current News Articles

By Yaqoob Akbary

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan

The New York Times

April 4, 2026

Floods have killed at least 77 people this week and destroyed or damaged thousands of homes, and an earthquake on Friday killed a dozen more.

A deadly earthquake rocked northern Afghanistan on Friday, deepening the misery of a country suffering from days of heavy rain and flash floods that have swept away people and homes, as well as a hunger crisis and armed conflict.

The floods have killed at least 77 people and injured 137 others across eastern, central and southern Afghanistan this week, destroyed almost 800 homes and damaged more than 2,600 others, according to the Ministry of Disaster Management. They have also severed roads, leaving large parts of the country disconnected.

Abdul Zahir, 24, said heavy rain destroyed the mud brick house his uncle built in Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan. “Yesterday afternoon, after heavy rains, the roof of the house collapsed, killing three of my cousins, who were between the ages of eight and 14, and injuring six others,” he said.

The earthquake on Friday night, with a magnitude of 5.8, was centered in the Yamgan district of mountainous Badakhshan Province but also shook the capital, Kabul, well over 100 miles away. The Afghan authorities said it killed at least 12 people and damaged 33 houses in Kabul Province.

Devastating floods are an annual threat to Afghanistan in the winter and spring, and two years ago they claimed the lives of more than 300 people in the northern provinces, but the country is especially vulnerable now.

Afghanistan is suffering a critical food shortage, while trying to absorb millions of Afghans who had long lived in neighboring countries but have recently been expelled.

The country is still trying to recover from two deadly quakes last year and the loss of $1.8 billion in aid cuts driven primarily by the Trump administration’s closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In addition, Pakistani and Afghan forces have clashed repeatedly over the last two years, a conflict that escalated early this year with Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan cities.

The flooding this week closed the connecting roads between the southern and central provinces, increasing the price of basic food items in the central region.

UNICEF Warns Education and Work Bans Threaten Future of Afghan Women and Girls

April 3, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

April 3, 2026

UNICEF has raised fresh concern over the legal and social condition of women and girls in Afghanistan, warning that restrictions on education and work are creating long-term harm that will be felt far beyond the current crisis.

The agency says these policies are not only damaging daily life, but also weakening the ability of women and girls to face future challenges safely and independently.

According to the report, the continued ban on girls’ education beyond primary school and the narrowing of women’s access to employment are increasing serious protection risks, including economic dependency, reduced access to services and greater exposure to exploitation and abuse. UNICEF says the restrictions are eroding both individual dignity and long-term resilience.

The agency also warned that the longer these policies remain in place, the more they will damage Afghanistan’s social and economic resilience, with consequences likely to affect future generations. UNICEF has repeatedly argued that excluding women and girls from school and work harms not only families, but also the country’s health system, economy and long-term recovery.

The warning comes as Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are barred from secondary and higher education. A joint UNESCO-UNICEF statement in January said 2.2 million adolescent girls are already excluded from school, while millions more face declining educational quality and shrinking opportunities.

UNICEF has said the consequences of these restrictions go far beyond classrooms. The agency warns that the ban on girls’ education is increasing the risk of child marriage, reducing future earnings, worsening mental health and creating shortages of trained female professionals, especially in healthcare and education.

International agencies also say the wider humanitarian crisis is making the situation worse. With millions of Afghans facing poverty, food insecurity and shrinking access to services, the exclusion of women from work and girls from school is increasingly seen as a direct threat to the country’s ability to recover and develop.

UNICEF’s latest warning reinforces growing international concern that the continued exclusion of Afghan women and girls is not only a human rights issue, but a long-term national crisis. Without reversing these restrictions, Afghanistan risks losing another generation of opportunity, stability and social progress.

NRC Calls for Urgent Aid for Families Displaced by Pakistan Attacks in Eastern Afghanistan

April 3, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

April 3, 2026

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has called for urgent humanitarian aid for families displaced by recent fighting between Taliban forces and Pakistan in Afghanistan. The group said on Friday that thousands of families have been forced from their homes by the latest border violence.

According to the NRC, many of the displaced are now living in poorly equipped tents and in areas with little or no access to basic services, including shelter, clean water and healthcare. The aid group warned that emergency support is now critical to meet their most basic needs.

The appeal comes as heavy rain and flooding continue to affect parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, worsening conditions for already vulnerable families and increasing pressure on local communities and aid providers.

Recent border clashes between Taliban and Pakistani forces have triggered fresh displacement in already unstable areas, particularly in eastern provinces where communities frequently face insecurity and limited state support.

Afghanistan is also facing overlapping humanitarian crises, including conflict, climate shocks, poverty and mass return movements, leaving millions dependent on outside assistance.

The NRC says immediate aid is essential to prevent the situation from worsening further for families already displaced by conflict and natural disasters.

Pakistan, Afghanistan hold talks in China to end months of conflict

April 3, 2026 Current News Articles

By AFP and Reuters

Al Jazeera

China has been trying to mediate a negotiated settlement to the conflict between the allies-turned-foes.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have confirmed they are holding talks in China aimed at ending the worst conflict between the South Asian neighbours since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Senior officials from both countries are holding preliminary talks in the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi to try to secure a ceasefire to end months of cross-border attacks, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said on Thursday.

The fighting has killed dozens of people on both sides and disrupted trade and cross-border travel since it started in October.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring fighters who carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of United States-led troops. Kabul denies the charge, saying these fighters are Pakistan’s domestic problem.

Andrabi told reporters in Beijing that the government hoped for a “durable solution”.

“Our participation [in talks] is a reiteration of our core concerns,” he said.

“The burden of real process, however, lies with Afghanistan, which must demonstrate visible and verifiable actions against terrorist groups using [its] soil against Pakistan.”

Following China’s request for talks, Afghanistan’s Taliban government said it had sent a “mid-level delegation” to Urumqi.

The Afghan side “intends to hold comprehensive and responsible talks with the other side on good neighbourliness, strengthening trade relations, and effective management of security issues”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said.

Pakistan described the negotiations as “working-level talks”.

“Our delegation has not returned yet,” Islamabad’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

China, which also borders both countries, has been trying to mediate a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Beijing deployed a special envoy to try to broker a deal last month, but the diplomatic effort was followed by Pakistani strikes on a Kabul rehab centre that prompted international condemnation.

More than 400 people were killed in the attack, according to Afghan officials. Islamabad said the strike targeted military installations and “terrorist support infrastructure”.

The two sides then announced a pause in fighting to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye.

But sporadic attacks have been reported in border areas since the temporary truce ended.

On Wednesday, Farid Dehqan, a police spokesperson for the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, said Pakistan had fired mortars into Afghan territory late Wednesday, killing two civilians and wounding six others, including four children. He said the shelling was ongoing two hours after it started.

Andrabi dismissed the accusation, saying Pakistan conducts operations against fighters with care to avoid civilian casualties.

While addressing hostilities with its neighbour, Pakistan has also been engaged in a flurry of diplomacy to try to bring Washington and Tehran to the table and end their war.

China has backed Pakistan’s efforts, aligning itself with the aims of Gulf countries affected by the spread of the conflict in the region.

Clashes Reported in Afghanistan’s Khost, Paktia Border Areas With Pakistan

April 2, 2026 Current News Articles

By Fidel Rahmati

Khaama Press

April 2, 2026

Fresh clashes have erupted along Afghanistan’s eastern border, with local sources reporting fighting between the Taliban and Pakistani forces in Khost and Paktia, while Taliban officials say recent Pakistani attacks have also caused civilian casualties in several provinces.

Local sources said the first clash began around 7:00 p.m. on Thursday in the Ghulam Khan crossing area of Gurbuz district in Khost province, where Taliban forces and Pakistani border guards exchanged fire. Another source in Paktia said fighting also broke out in Dand Patan district, with both sides reportedly using light and heavy weapons.

At the same time, Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for Taliban administration, said Pakistani forces had launched mortar, rocket and air attacks since Wednesday on parts of Kunar, Paktika and Khost. He said the attacks killed two civilians and wounded 25 others, most of them children.

According to Fitrat, Pakistani shelling hit Sarkano and Manogai districts in Kunar, where 10 children were among the wounded. He also said Pakistani forces fired 185 long-range artillery shells into parts of Kunar and used drones to strike Shkin district in Paktika and Zazi Maidan district in Khost, injuring several more civilians.

So far, neither Pakistani officials nor Taliban authorities have released a full account of the latest border fighting. However, the escalation comes as delegations from both sides are currently in Urumqi, China, where talks are underway to reduce tensions and halt the recent wave of violence.

Tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban administration have risen sharply in recent weeks, with Islamabad accusing Afghanistan territory of being used by anti-Pakistan militant groups. Taliban officials reject those claims and say Pakistani attacks are increasingly affecting civilian areas.

Eastern Afghanistan provinces including Khost, Paktia, Kunar and Paktika have repeatedly witnessed artillery fire, cross-border raids and armed confrontations, forcing families to flee and raising fears of a broader border conflict.

The latest clashes underline the fragile and dangerous situation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where diplomatic talks have so far failed to stop violence on the ground and civilians continue to bear the heaviest cost.

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