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Blasts heard in Kabul as Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict continues

March 2, 2026
By Al Jazeera Staff and News Agencies
Published On 1 Mar 2026
Explosions have been heard in the Afghan capital, Kabul, with Taliban forces saying they opened fire at Pakistani aircraft, as the conflict stretched into its fourth consecutive day.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government said its forces deployed anti-aircraft and missile defence systems against Pakistani jets that entered Afghan airspace early on Sunday morning. This included thwarting an attempted Pakistani strike on Bagram, the former US military base north of Kabul that US President Donald Trump expressed interest in reoccupying last year.

Pakistan has not responded to the claim.

Islamabad has declared that the two countries are in “open war”, and on Sunday, its forces were reported to still be holding a 32-square-kilometre (12-mile) area of Afghan territory in the southern Zhob sector, according to two Pakistani security officials.

Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, said Pakistani strikes had killed 55 civilians across multiple provinces since fighting intensified on Thursday, according to the Anadolu news agency.

Among them was a woman and a child, who were killed in a drone strike on Nangarhar province, as well as a civilian whose home was hit by mortar fire in Paktia, eastern Afghanistan.

In Kunar province, a young man named Sajid described losing his brother, who had refused to flee. “He said, ‘I will stay and look after the house,’” Sajid told the AFP news agency. “He was martyred near the mosque while trying to leave.”

Al Jazeera has not been able to verify casualty claims from either side.

Despite the Taliban signalling an openness to negotiations, Pakistan has rejected dialogue. “There won’t be any talks. There’s no dialogue. There’s no negotiation,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, the Pakistani prime minister’s spokesman for foreign media, insisting that Islamabad’s sole demand was an end to what it calls Afghanistan-based “terrorism”.

Long-running dispute

Tensions between the two neighbours have been running high since late Thursday, when Kabul launched “retaliatory operations” along the border after Pakistani air strikes in late February.

The roots of the conflict lie in a long-running and bitter dispute over Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, an armed group that Pakistan accuses Kabul of harbouring.

The TTP has dramatically intensified its campaign inside Pakistan, with the last year being the country’s most violent in nearly a decade. Deaths surged by 75 percent from 2024 to 3,413, and overall violent incidents rose by 29 percent, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank.

On February 21, a Pakistani air strike targeted what it called TTP hideouts in the Nangarhar and Paktika provinces, along Pakistan’s border. The United Nations said it had credible reports that 13 Afghan civilians were killed.

Kabul calls Pakistan’s actions unprovoked and denies that Afghan soil is used to threaten any neighbouring country.

Militarily, the two sides are deeply mismatched, as Pakistan has vastly superior conventional firepower, aircraft, tanks, and advanced defence systems.

But the Afghan Taliban, hardened by more than two decades of rebel warfare against US-led NATO forces, has deployed drones to strike Pakistani military camps, a cheap and effective tool that is reshaping the battlefield.

International calls for de-escalation are growing, with the European Union, UN, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan all urging restraint.

The group Diplomats Without Borders warned on February 27 that further confrontation risked “broader regional instability” and called on both governments to return to direct dialogue.

Yet, with much of the world’s diplomatic bandwidth consumed by the rapidly escalating US-Israel conflict with Iran, there are fears this war could be left to continue without urgent international attention.

Despite the clashes with Pakistani forces, on Saturday, Afghan government spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi took to social media to condemn the attacks on Iran and Iran’s subsequent attacks on countries in the Gulf. He urged all parties to “address their differences through diplomatic means.”

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a near-identical call for restraint in the Middle East on February 28.

Omar Samad, a former Afghan diplomat, warned that the war conflict involving Iran could distract from efforts to end the fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Iran and the involvement of the United States and Israel across the board in the Middle East is a much larger, more important, significant event”, Samad said, “and it is taking away bandwidth from anything else happening across the world, including in the neighbourhood of Pakistan, Afghanistan”.

Blasts heard in Kabul as Pakistan-Afghanistan conflict continues
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Afghanistan strikes Pakistan’s strategic Nur Khan military airbase

March 2, 2026

ANI (India)

Kabul, Updated At : 12:21 AM Mar 03, 2026
featured-imgfeatured-img
The Nur Khan airbase in Rawalpindi’s Chakala also suffered significant damage in May last year following India’s coordinated strikes on key military installations in Pakistan as part of Operation Sindoor.

Amid escalated cross-border tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Ministry of National Defense of the Islamic Emirate said it had carried out airstrikes on major military installations in Pakistan, including the Nur Khan airbase in Rawalpindi, describing the action as a response to Pakistani air raids on Afghan territory.

Notably, the Nur Khan airbase in Rawalpindi’s Chakala also suffered significant damage in May last year following India’s coordinated strikes on key military installations in Pakistan, which came as part of Operation Sindoor, in retaliatory action by the Indian Armed Forces.

The Indian Armed Forces launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of May 7, as a retaliatory response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir. Satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies on May 13 revealed significant damage to multiple air bases in Pakistan, including Nur Khan Air Base.

Meanwhile, the Afghan defence ministry also stated that the operation was launched in retaliation for airstrikes that were carried out by the Pakistani army on Kabul, Bagram and other areas “last night and today”.

Afghanistan strikes Pakistan’s strategic Nur Khan military airbase
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Pakistan, Afghanistan show no signs of stepping back as fighting enters fifth day

March 2, 2026

By  and 

Reuters

  • Fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan enters fifth day
  • Taliban claims to have destroyed Pakistani military assets
  • Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring insurgents
KABUL/ISLAMABAD, March 2 (Reuters) – Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Monday that their militaries had targeted each other’s posts across the border as their fighting entered a ​fifth day, fuelling instability in a region rocked by U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation.
The intensity of the clashes, however, appeared ‌to be lower than when it began although there were no signs that the allies-turned-foes were seeking to step back and make peace.

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The direct fighting between the South Asian neighbours who share a 2,600-km (1,615-mile) border is the heaviest in years.
It began when Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers launched what they called retaliatory strikes on Pakistani installations in response to Pakistan’s targetting of militants in Afghanistan.
Dozens ​of people were killed on both sides as Pakistan used jets to launch air-to-ground missiles at Taliban military sites and even directly ​targeted Afghanistan’s government for the first time over allegations it harbours militants seeking to overthrow the Islamabad government.

BAGRAM AIR BASE ⁠TARGETED

On Monday, the Taliban defence ministry said that Afghan forces targeted and destroyed a Pakistani military armoured tank on the frontier in Paktika province after it had ​fired shells indiscriminately toward Afghanistan.
Defence ministry spokesperson Enayatullah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had killed more than 100 enemy personnel and captured more than 25 Pakistani ​military posts so far.
In a statement directed at the people of Afghanistan, Khowarazmi said that “sometimes the enemy’s aircraft pass through our airspace” and Taliban fighters fire air defence weapons to repel enemy attacks.
“Do not be concerned, they are your own sons. Be confident and trust your sons,” he said, referring to the Taliban fighters.
Afghan police said late on Sunday ​that Pakistani jets had tried to bomb Bagram air base outside Kabul and were repelled by Russian-made ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns. There were no casualties ​or financial losses, they said.
Bagram air base, located north of Kabul, was the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan and once the centrepiece of U.S. and NATO military operations ‌during the ⁠20-year war.

NO PROGRESS ON PEACE MOVES

Pakistani security sources said that their air strikes and ground attacks were ongoing and Pakistani troops had destroyed ammunition depots in Khost and Jalalabad, as well as a drone storage site in Jalalabad, among other targets.
Pakistani forces had so far killed 435 Afghan troops, destroyed 188 posts and captured another 31 posts, Pakistani Information Minister Attaulla Tarar said in a post on X.
Pakistan had also destroyed 188 tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery ​guns and targeted 51 locations by ​air, he said.
Since the fighting began, ⁠both sides have claimed to have inflicted heavy damage on the other — figures which Reuters has been unable to verify.
Friendly countries such as Qatar last week said they were willing to mediate and end the fighting. The Afghan ​Taliban too had said it was willing to negotiate but there has been no movement, especially with the Gulf region ​getting caught in ⁠its own conflict.

MILITANCY ONLY ISSUE, PAKISTAN SAYS

The Afghan-Pakistan enmity is centred around Pakistani allegations that Afghanistan harbours Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants, which it says are waging an insurgency inside Pakistan.
Afghanistan has denied the accusation, saying it does not allow Afghan territory to be used against other countries and that Pakistan’s security challenges are an internal ⁠matter.
“Pakistan has ​had only one ask, and that’s that Afghan soil shouldn’t be used against Pakistan,” Pakistani ​Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told diplomats at a briefing in Islamabad on Monday, in comments aired by state broadcaster PTV. “This is the only issue we have, as long as it is settled, ​we have no other issue with Afghanistan.”

Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by YP Rajesh; Editing by Toby Chopra

Pakistan, Afghanistan show no signs of stepping back as fighting enters fifth day
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Afghanistan Says Pakistan Tried to Strike Prized Air Base

March 2, 2026

Elian Peltier reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.

The New York Times

Afghan officials said they had thwarted a Pakistani airstrike on the former U.S. base, Bagram airfield, amid an intensifying campaign that has targeted dozens of military sites across the country.

Afghan officials said Sunday that Pakistan had conducted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, its most prized military asset and one coveted by President Trump.

“This morning at around 5 a.m., several fighter jets belonging to Pakistan’s military regime attempted to carry out a bombing operation within the airspace of Bagram Air Base,” Fazal Rahim Meskinyar, a spokesman for the Parwan Province police, where Bagram is, said in a statement.

Mr. Meskinyar said that Afghan antiaircraft weapons had repelled the missiles, and that there were no reported casualties.

A spokesman for the Taliban government, Hamdullah Fitrat, and the Afghan Ministry of Defense both said Sunday evening that Afghanistan had faced an “aerial aggression” at the base. Their statements did not say whether the attack had caused any damage.

Bagram Airfield was the nerve center of the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan and a big trophy when the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021 after the United States withdrew its forces.

Since returning to the presidency in 2025, Mr. Trump has said that the United States should never have abandoned Bagram and that he wanted to reclaim it. “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us,” he said in September.

Mr. Trump said Bagram was strategically important for the United States because “it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”

The Pakistani military has hit dozens of small Afghan military bases, ammunition depots and outposts in recent days, declaring that it is in “open war” against the Taliban government.

Targeting Bagram is different. Until Sunday, the Pakistani strikes had not been aimed at major infrastructure, and nothing with the symbolic significance that Bagram holds.

The base, about 25 miles north of the capital, Kabul, has massive twin runways, one of which, at 11,800 feet, is Afghanistan’s longest, designed to sustain heavy fighter planes and transport carriers. But recent reports have suggested that the Afghan government now makes limited use of the airfield. “We have neither weapons nor forces in Bagram,” Bakht ur-Rahman Sharafat, the director general of Afghanistan’s national airline, said on social media on Sunday.

The attempted strikes on Bagram came on the second day of a coordinated attack by the United States and Israel on major cities and infrastructure in Iran. On Saturday, the attacks killed Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of broader instability in the Middle East and South Asia. Iran has responded with strikes on Israel and several other Middle Eastern countries that host U.S. military bases.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have been trading attacks for months, but the violence has now reached its highest level in years. Pakistan has said the strikes are in retaliation for the Taliban government’s support of a militant group that has killed hundreds of Pakistani security forces in recent years.

Afghanistan has responded with attacks on Pakistani outposts along its 1,600-mile shared border with Pakistan. Afghan officials have rejected Pakistan’s accusations that they support the militant group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban. In private, however, they have acknowledged the presence of the group’s militants in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Pakistan also carried out airstrikes in Kabul. A loud explosion rumbled through the city of six million as residents began their daily Ramadan fast. The fighting resumed on Sunday night, with heavy antiaircraft fire heard in central Kabul.

Both Pakistani and Afghan forces have ignored calls by neighboring countries to respect a truce during the holy month of Ramadan.

It remains unclear what objectives Pakistan wants to accomplish with the latest military campaign. Analysts say that more strikes on Afghan military infrastructure are likely to lead to retaliatory attacks from militant groups supporting the Taliban government, including the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani military is far bigger than Afghanistan’s, but over the weekend some analysts questioned Pakistan’s endgame for its campaign — or if it had any.

Though the Taliban government has rebuffed Mr. Trump’s effort to take back Bagram, it has called for Afghanistan and the United States to rebuild economic and diplomatic relations.

“The United States is well aware that its 20-year military presence in Afghanistan constituted a failed policy,” Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, told The New York Times in Kabul in January. “We seek positive relations with the United States across all domains — without any military presence.”

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

Afghanistan Says Pakistan Tried to Strike Prized Air Base
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No Clear Endgame in the Conflict Between Afghanistan and Pakistan

March 1, 2026

By Elian Peltier

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan

The New York Times

2026

Once again, Afghanistan is fighting a mightier enemy.

After Pakistan declared “open war” on the Taliban government on Friday, two armed forces with wide gaps in weaponry and tactics between them now face each other along a roughly 1,600-mile-long border.

Pakistan has one of the largest militaries in Asia, emboldened by its successes in a conflict with India last year. The Taliban in Afghanistan have honed guerrilla tactics over more than two decades of war with U.S. forces, which abandoned billions of dollars worth of weapons in 2021.

The latest phase of the conflict, which started with border skirmishes last year, is expected to continue flaring up and may escalate. Additional airstrikes threaten to inflict major damage on cities in Afghanistan, which is already reeling from extreme poverty and a humanitarian crisis. Militant groups supporting the Taliban are likely to target deeper in Pakistan’s territory with more attacks, including suicide bombings and assaults on security forces, analysts say.

The Pakistani military carried out a barrage of airstrikes on Afghan military infrastructure on Friday, after accusing the Taliban government of hosting and supporting a militant group that has repeatedly attacked Pakistan’s security forces.

The strikes this week did not target major infrastructure to leave room for escalation, Mr. Cheema noted.

“The Pakistani military knows where to hit and hurt the Taliban the most,” he said.

Pakistan’s military and security apparatus supported the Taliban for decades, including by providing a refuge for the group’s leadership during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and supplying the insurgency with weapons.

Its government initially welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, but the relationship soured shortly after Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an Islamist militant group that opposes the Pakistani state, intensified its attacks across the border. Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of harboring the group, which is also known as the Pakistani Taliban.

“Now it is open war between us and you,” Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said Friday in a post on social media. The comment was a sharp turn from the public support he had once displayed toward Taliban officials.

The Afghan Ministry of Defense says it has 205,000 men in its armed forces. An additional 223,000 men are in the Afghan police, according to the Interior Ministry, though analysts say those figures are difficult to verify.

The Taliban have also inherited Black Hawk helicopters, Humvee vehicles and thousands of weapons from the war against the United States — worth more than $7 billion in total, according to the Department of Defense. Afghan soldiers in the capital, Kabul, and across the country can regularly be seen with M16 and AR-15 rifles, and markets there sell U.S. military uniforms and spare parts for night vision goggles.

Many of those weapons have ended up in the hands of insurgent groups like the Pakistani Taliban.

“The Taliban have definitely capitalized on the stocks of U.S. weapons, but they don’t have the logistical and maintenance capacity,” said Paddy Ginn, a senior expert on Afghanistan at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The Afghan military would struggle to hit major Pakistani military bases, Mr. Ginn added.

“Afghanistan has a fledgling air force made of helicopters and drones they’ve weaponized,” he said. “Pakistan is pretty impressive in its air defense counter drones and airstrike capabilities.”

Still, the Taliban fighters who now make up the bulk of the Afghan military have repeatedly broken through Pakistani territory through lethal ground incursions. They struck more than 50 locations on Friday in coordinated attacks, which the Afghan government said were in retaliation for Pakistani strikes earlier in the week.

“The Taliban mastered the art of taking out isolated military checkpoints when they were fighting internationally backed Afghan troops,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“They’re trying to rely on their tried and tested methods because they don’t have a lot of other options,” he added.

Afghan officials have called for dialogue, and analysts on both sides of the border say the region cannot sustain more volatility.

Pakistan has refused the call for talks. Although the Taliban publicly deny hosting the Pakistani Taliban, Islamabad says it has run out of patience with the Taliban leadership after several rounds of failed peace negotiations and relentless attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban have killed more than 1,300 people in over 800 attacks since 2021, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a research center based in Islamabad.

Pakistani aircraft hit military compounds in Kabul and Kandahar — home to Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada — on Friday as well as various other military facilities and arms depots near the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military claims to have destroyed 135 Afghan tanks and carrier vehicles and killed more than 330 Afghan fighters in a single day, although it made no distinction between Afghan soldiers and Pakistani Taliban militants.

Pakistan also struck areas that were full of civilians, according to humanitarian organizations and Afghan officials. They added that it targeted at least two camps hosting Afghans who were recently expelled from Pakistan. Returnees evacuated one of the camps; three Afghan civilians were killed and seven others wounded in a strike near the other camp in southeastern Afghanistan on Saturday, Afghan officials said.

The camps are run by U.N. agencies and international and Afghan organizations.

Allison Hooker, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, said on Friday that she had called Pakistan’s foreign minister and “expressed support for Pakistan’s right to defend itself against Taliban attacks.”

After Pakistan’s airstrikes in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban and two other Islamist militant groups urged their fighters to intensify attacks in Pakistan’s two most populous provinces, Punjab and Sindh, which have largely been spared the brunt of Pakistani Taliban’s assaults.

The attacks would aim to “weaken the enemy” and show solidarity with Afghans, the groups said in statements. The Pakistani Taliban have about 6,000 fighters, according to the United Nations.

The Pakistani government has tightened security nationwide, and the U.S. embassy in Islamabad has advised Americans in Pakistan to avoid large commercial areas.

“A blowback will come,” said Mansoor Ahmad Khan, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan. “That is the nature of war.”

Pakistan should leave the door open for de-escalation, he added.

“The Afghan Taliban have suffered heavy damage as a result of Pakistani strikes, no doubt,” Mr. Khan said. “But an expansion of the war is not in Pakistan’s interest. Nor is it in Afghanistan’s.”

Zia ur-Rehman and Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Christiaan Triebert from New York, Safiullah Padshah and Yaqoob Akbary from Kabul, and Omar Ataullah from Kandahar.

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

No Clear Endgame in the Conflict Between Afghanistan and Pakistan
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Pakistan says it is in ‘open war’ with Afghanistan as nations exchange strikes

February 28, 2026
By Haq Nawaz Khan, and Shaiq Hussain
The Washington Post
February 27, 2026

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan’s defense minister said his country will have “open war” with Afghanistan, as the neighboring nations carried out strikes in each others’ capital cities after months of escalating tension.

Khawaja Asif said that Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the United States and allied forces withdrew in 2021, but that its patience with the Taliban government had run out and that Pakistan’s forces would respond decisively to what he described as Afghan aggression, in a post Thursday on X.

The escalation comes after Pakistan shut all major crossings along its roughly 1,600-mile border with Afghanistan in mid-October, amid clashes along the frontier. The sides eventually agreed to a ceasefire, but crossings remain closed to trade in what amounts to the longest border shutdown in living memory, according to locals.

The Afghan Taliban have denied harboring the group.

In the renewed round of conflict, Pakistan carried out strikes in Kabul and Kandahar, the base of Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, as well as in the eastern border region of Paktia, according to officials in both nations. On Friday, the Afghan Ministry of Defense said it launched strikes against military targets in Islamabad and Abbottabad, following an earlier announcement of strikes on Pakistani border positions. Both sides claimed their strikes were retaliatory.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement Friday that his country would crush any aggression. Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said in a statement that 297 members of the Taliban had been killed and more than 450 wounded in strikes. In a statement, the Taliban accused Pakistan of targeting civilians, killing 19 people and injuring 26.

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Mujahid said that if Pakistan chooses war, Afghanistan would “choose annihilation.”

U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett called for calm and the two nations to respect international law and civilian rights after the tensions “regrettably flowed into violence.”

Earlier, Afghanistan’s Ministry of National Defense said it had carried out “retaliatory attacks” after the Pakistani military breached Afghan border positions.

It claimed 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed and their bodies were taken to Afghanistan, with two bases and 19 posts captured, in attacks in Paktia, Khost, Nangahar and Konar, among other places. Thirteen civilians were injured in a missile attack and eight fighters were killed, the Afghan Defense Ministry said.

The number of casualties could not be independently verified by The Washington Post.

Asked on Friday whether he would seek to stop the fighting, President Donald Trump did not answer directly, but said that he had a “great” relationship with Pakistani leaders. “I think that Pakistan is doing terrifically well,” he told reporters.

“The United States supports Pakistan’s right to defend itself against attacks from the Taliban,” the State Department said in a statement Friday.

“The Taliban have consistently failed to uphold their counterterrorism commitments, allowing violence to destabilize the region while terrorist groups use Afghanistan as a launching pad for their heinous attacks,” the statement said.

The clashes come as Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with others in the region, brace for potential ripple effects of any U.S. strikes on Iran, with which both countries share borders. The threat of U.S. strikes, amid nuclear talks set to resume next week, continued to build Friday with a State Department advisory to nonessential U.S. Embassy employees in Jerusalem to leave Israel, against which Iran has pledged strikes in response to a U.S. attack. The advisory did not mention Iran.

Craw reported from London and Hussain reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Michael Birnbaum, Karen DeYoung and Adam Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.

Pakistan says it is in ‘open war’ with Afghanistan as nations exchange strikes
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Pakistan Strikes Afghanistan in ‘Open War’ Against Taliban Government

February 28, 2026

The airstrikes came hours after Afghan troops had attacked Pakistani border positions and follow months of worsening relations between the neighboring countries.

Elian Peltier and Zia ur-Rehman reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.

The New York Times

Pakistan and Afghanistan engaged in their fiercest clashes in years on Friday, according to officials from both nations, escalating months of tension and border skirmishes into an open conflict. Afghan troops stormed dozens of Pakistani border positions and Pakistan responded with a wave of airstrikes targeting major cities and military hubs.

Beyond Kabul, home to six million people, the strikes hit the southern city of Kandahar — where the Taliban’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives — and four border provinces, according to Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani military spokesman.

“That’s what has been done so far,” General Sharif said at a news briefing on Friday. “This is continuing.”

Pakistan launched strikes on more than 20 locations, General Sharif said, hours after Afghan troops had attacked more than 50 Pakistani border positions. Afghan officials described that assault as retaliation for Pakistani strikes earlier in the week.

“Our operation last night was a retaliatory operation and a response to Pakistan’s operation, not an attack to start a war against Pakistan,” Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said at a news conference in Kandahar on Friday.

But Pakistani officials showed no willingness to stop the most expansive fighting in years.

“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, said on social media. “Now it is open war between us and you.”

The fighting comes as both countries have been bracing for the fallout on trade and the movement of people from potential U.S. military strikes in neighboring Iran, adding yet another layer of uncertainty in an area already on edge.

At least one ammunition depot was bombed in Kabul, according to an Afghan military officer who reached the site shortly afterward and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the clashes publicly. Satellite images reviewed by The New York Times confirmed the strike. Pakistan’s state broadcaster said an ammunition depot in Kandahar had also been bombed.

The extent of any casualties or damage from the airstrikes was unclear, while each side claimed to have killed dozens of combatants in the border clashes.

Kabul, dotted with checkpoints and officers in uniform even in calmer times, saw a heavier presence of soldiers and security personnel on the streets on Friday. In most areas, however, residents went on with their errands and gathered at mosques for midday prayers.

The clashes showcased what armies from both countries are well-known for — air power from Pakistan’s side, and ground incursions from Afghanistan’s. The Taliban deployed and mastered ground incursions on isolated military outposts during their 20-year insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition, said Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“The Pakistanis have replied by using overwhelming force and that escalates the ladder from Kabul’s perspective, which looks at how to respond better,” Mr. Bahiss said.

“The two sides keep doing what they think are measured responses,” Mr. Bahiss added. “But they keep upping the ante.”

Relations between the neighboring countries have deteriorated recently over Pakistan’s accusations that the Afghan government is harboring the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The militant group has killed hundreds of Pakistani security personnel in recent years, and in November claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed a dozen people at a courthouse in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.

Pakistan says the Taliban allow the Pakistani Taliban to train and operate freely in Afghanistan, from where they launch attacks across the 1,600-mile, mountainous border.

The Taliban deny hosting the group and accuse Pakistan’s government of trying to deflect blame for its own domestic security failures. But privately, Afghan officials acknowledge the presence of the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan, at least.

The presence of the Pakistani Taliban and the resurgence of other groups in Afghanistan, including Al Qaeda, has alarmed countries across the region and beyond.

The government in Afghanistan has faced pressure from China and Russia to rein in militant groups operating in the country. China has had sustained diplomatic ties with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, and Russia was the first country last year to recognize the group as the country’s legitimate authority.

The Afghan government has provided the Pakistani Taliban with weapons, including rifles and drones, according to the U.N. Security Council. The United Nations also noted in a report published this month that “Al Qaeda continued to enjoy the patronage of the de facto authorities,” referring to Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration.

Pakistan and Afghanistan released diverging claims on Friday about the number of deaths from the day’s fighting at the border region. The Pakistani military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said at least 274 people had been killed there, though he made no distinction among civilians, Pakistani Taliban fighters and Afghan security forces. Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesman, said 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed.

Image

\Since October, Pakistan has kept critical border crossings closed to civilians and traders, reopening them only intermittently to expel Afghans living in Pakistan.

The suspension of trade and the expulsion of more than a million Afghans last year alone have hurt the economies of both countries.

In some villages on the Pakistani side, officials have in recent months instructed families to evacuate as a preventive measure. They have advised residents who chose to remain to seek shelter in basements when tensions flare up.

“The border clashes have now become routine, and it has become almost impossible to live here amid firing and mortar shelling,” said Zar Wali, a farmer and father of four from a village in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province near the Torkham border crossing.

“When firing begins from both sides, we rush our children into the basements and wait for hours, uncertain of what will happen next,” Mr. Wali added.

Longstanding, cross-border ethnic and family ties have frayed in recent months, and in some Pakistani border districts, local officials have urged villagers to support security forces, residents said.

“Some villagers have taken up positions alongside security forces in the trenches and are participating in the exchanges of fire,” said Murtaza Shah, a schoolteacher in the border district of Kurram. “This is a critical time,” he added. “We must stand with our forces, just as communities across the border are backing Taliban fighters.”

The clashes on Friday came during the holy month of Ramadan, which United Nations officials had hoped would be a time to broker peace between the two countries. Despite a cease-fire signed in October, although undermined by frequent border clashes, mediation efforts by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have all failed.

Pakistan’s growing hostility toward the Taliban in recent months is a sharp turn from decades of tacit support for the group. The Afghan Taliban leadership lived in southern Pakistan during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. After the Taliban swept back to power in 2021, the Pakistani government initially supported them, and there were even talks that Afghanistan could join a China-Pakistan economic corridor.

That seems out of the question now.

“This is not a government,” Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani military spokesman, said of the Taliban in a recent interview with The Times. “They are warlords. Afghanistan is a space where a nonstate militia is sitting.”

Yaqoob Akbary contributed reporting from Kabul; Omar Ataullah from Kandahar, Afghanistan; Salman Masood from Islamabad; and Agnes Chang from Seoul.

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

Pakistan Strikes Afghanistan in ‘Open War’ Against Taliban Government
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Afghanistan says it launches attacks against Pakistan

February 26, 2026
By Al Jazeera Staff, Reuters and The Associated Press
26 Feb 2026
Afghan military source tells Al Jazeera 13 border outposts were captured as Pakistan denies that any posts were seized.

Afghanistan has launched attacks against Pakistan’s military positions along their border in response to Pakistani air strikes last week, Taliban authorities say, as Pakistan says its forces have responded.

The media office of Afghanistan’s military corps in the east said in a statement that “heavy clashes” began late on Thursday “in response to the recent air strikes carried out by Pakistani forces in Nangarhar and Paktia” provinces.

“In response ‌to repeated provocations and violations by Pakistani military circles, large-scale offensive operations have been launched ⁠against Pakistani military ⁠positions and installations along the Durand Line,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah ⁠Mujahid wrote in a post on X.

The countries’ 2,611km-long (1,622-mile-long) border is known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognised.

An Afghan military source told Al Jazeera that 10 Pakistani soldiers were killed and that 13 outposts were captured.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said on X that Pakistani ⁠troops had delivered ⁠an “immediate and ⁠effective response” to Taliban fire across ⁠several sectors ⁠in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Taliban regime forces are being delivered punishment in Chitral, Khyber, Mohmand, Kurram and Bajaur sectors. Early reports confirm heavy casualties on Afghan side with multiple posts and equipment destroyed,” the ministry said.

There was no immediate comment from Pakistan on the Afghan claim that 10 soldiers were killed.

Pakistan’s government spokesman wrote on X that no posts were captured or damaged.

Pakistani security sources told Al Jazeera that Pakistani forces have “inflicted heavy losses” across across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in response to “unprovoked Taliban aggression.”

Separately, a Pakistani security source told Al Jazeera that a number of Afghan soldiers fled from three locations targeted by Pakistani fire in retaliation for Afghan fire originating from those locations.

On Sunday, Pakistan’s military carried out strikes along the border with Afghanistan, saying it had killed at least 70 fighters. Afghanistan rejected the claim, saying civilians had been killed, including women and children.

Relations between the neighbours have plunged in recent months with land border crossings largely shut since deadly fighting in October killed more than 70 people on both sides.

Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to act against armed groups that carry out attacks in Pakistan, which the Taliban government denies.

Afghanistan says it launches attacks against Pakistan
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A Hero the Taliban Didn’t Expect

February 26, 2026
By Elian Peltier and Yaqoob Akbary

A triumph in indoor soccer has turned Alireza Ahmadi, 17, and other players from the Hazara minority, long marginalized in Afghanistan, into national heroes.

After a lukewarm shower in the freezing winter of Kabul, Alireza Ahmadi combed his hair, tucked his white shirt into his black pants and stepped back onto the court.

Alireza, 17, is a phenomenon in Afghanistan, playing futsal, a faster indoor variant of soccer played with five on each side. Word had spread that he was participating in a local tournament on a recent afternoon, and fans, their smartphones raised, rushed to snap a selfie with him as he exited the locker room.

The teenager became a national hero last fall after scoring the winning goal against Afghanistan’s archrival, Iran, giving the country its first title at the Asian Youth Games, held in Bahrain. The victory spurred an outburst of collective joy that has become rare under Taliban rule and, for many Afghans, has upended how they perceive their own country.

“We’re trying from our end to show a different image of Afghanistan,” Alireza said. “There was war here. Now we want to host more games with foreign teams.”

The victory also brought a complex reality into focus. Alireza and nearly all the other faces of Afghanistan’s success are Hazaras, a religious and ethnic minority long marginalized by the Taliban. Since they swept back to power in 2021, the Taliban have evicted some Hazara communities from their ancestral lands, excluded them from branches of the judiciary and higher levels of government, and diverted humanitarian aid bound for Hazara-majority provinces, according to human rights groups.

Wherever the team has traveled since its victory, Afghans have celebrated en masse — playing music, taking videos, defying the rules. “We brought people pride, and they responded with warmth,” Alireza said.

With his neatly trimmed hair and shy smile, the teenager has become a celebrity beyond the pitch. He has appeared in an advertisement for an Afghan soft drink. His match videos and messages dedicated to Afghanistan have drawn tens of thousands of views, even as the Taliban have banned the depiction of human beings on television and social media.
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In November, thousands welcomed the team in Herat, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities and home to a large Hazara population. Fathers hoisted sons on their shoulders for a glimpse of the players. Fans threw firecrackers and played music, swamping officers from Afghanistan’s feared Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.

When ministry officers tried to stop photography, hundreds of smartphones lit up the stands in defiance. As security forces lined up for the evening prayer, crowds rushed to the pitch and surrounded the players for selfies.

“I request officials from the ministry for promotion of virtue not to harass the youth today,” Shah Rasol Ehrari, Herat’s soccer federation head, told the crowds. “Today is a day of joy.”

Surprised by the youth team’s popularity, the Taliban have rewarded Alireza and his teammates with cars and motorcycles.

Though cricket remains Afghanistan’s most popular sport, the victory in Bahrain has accelerated the rise of futsal.

“Futsal is more popular than soccer in the cities because there are more indoor futsal courts than proper soccer pitches,” said Hamza Qasimi, one of the winners at the Asian Youth Games.

On a recent morning, a crew of workers applied adhesive rubber strips on a new court in Chaprasak, a remote town in the central province of Daikundi.

“The national team is really good; it’s garnering a lot of interest,” said Khudadad Azizi, one of the court’s owners, as the scent of glue wafted over the surface.

In the rugged stretches of Daikundi or the outskirts of Kabul, the courts are often the most imposing structures around — steel frames and floodlights rising from empty lots. At night, the illuminated buildings look like spaceships.

In the most bitter winter months, the covered arenas become gathering places, with dozens of fans watching from stands overlooking the pristine courts. In Dasht-e-Barchi, a Hazara neighborhood of Kabul where Alireza grew up, the sport has become inescapable. “You can’t find a family without a kid playing futsal,” said Ghazanfar Arian, a tournament organizer in Kabul.

Alireza said he had dreamed of joining Afghanistan’s senior squad or professional clubs in Europe, but plans instead to honor his parents’ wishes and study medicine.

For now, his focus remains on the pitch. He is training for the Youth Olympic Games in Senegal this year, where the Afghan team is scheduled to compete..

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

A Hero the Taliban Didn’t Expect
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Afghanistan’s new penal code sets 15 days in prison for wife-beating, 5 months for animal fights

February 26, 2026

Associated Press

The Washington Post

February 26, 2026

ATHENS, Greece — A new penal code issued by decree in Afghanistan sets harsher punishments for the mistreatment of animals than for domestic violence against women and solidifies into law inequality based on gender and social status.

The decree, which was signed by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada in January, “defines several crimes and punishments that contravene Afghanistan’s international legal obligations,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Thursday in remarks to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He urged Afghan authorities to rescind the decree.

Comprised of 119 articles, the 60-page Decree No. 12 lays out penalties for women who visit their relatives without their husband’s permission, and allows husbands and the heads of households to determine and mete out punishment in their own homes.

“It provides for the use of corporal punishment for numerous offenses, including in the home, legitimizing violence against women and children,” Turk said. “And it criminalizes criticism of the de facto leadership and their policies, in violation of freedom of expression and assembly.”

The decree states that a man who beats his wife severely enough to cause a visible cut, wound or bruise faces 15 days in prison – if his wife can prove her case to a judge. But a woman who goes to her father’s house and stays there without her husband’s permission is punished by a three months in prison, as are her relatives if they do not return her to her husband.

The decree “formally removes equality between men and women before the law,” U.N. Women Special Representative in Afghanistan Susan Ferguson said in a statement released Wednesday. “It places husbands in a position of authority over their wives and limits women’s ability to seek protection or justice.”

Penalties are harsher for mistreating animals than women. Five months in prison is the punishment for anyone having animals or birds fight. Animal and bird fighting , particularly cockfights and fights between partridges, is a popular pastime in Afghanistan but was banned after the Taliban seized power in 2021.

Afghan authorities have often issued laws laying out various prohibitions, including bans on education for girls beyond primary school, on women working in most jobs, and mandates on how women should dress and behave . But the decree is the first full penal code issued by the government.

The new penal code also lays out different treatment for the same crime depending on social class, ranging from simple warnings for clerics to corporal punishment for those deemed to be at the lowest social rungs.

Scholars and “high-ranking people” face a warning from a judge; tribal leaders and businessmen receive a warning and a court summons; “average people of society” face imprisonment; and “the lower classes” are subject to physical beatings. If an offender is sentenced to a maximum 39 lashes, they must be to “different parts of the body,” the decree states.

However, the differing treatment does not apply in murder cases, where anyone found guilty faces the death penalty . The other capital offense is insulting the Prophet Muhammad, although in that case the death penalty can be converted to six years imprisonment if the offender repents.

Speaking in Geneva, Turk called on Afghan authorities to “reverse their course on excluding half the population. Women and girls are the present and the future, and the country cannot thrive without them.”

Afghanistan’s new penal code sets 15 days in prison for wife-beating, 5 months for animal fights
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