Islamabad, Pakistan – A key border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan has reopened two days after a cross-border exchange of fire killed at least nine Pakistani civilians and an Afghan soldier.

Abdul Hameed Zehri, an official at Chaman as the crossing on the Pakistani side is known, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday the situation there is back to normal.

”The border is open for trade and civilian use as usual. Things are running smoothly and situation is calm here,” Zehri said.

The Chaman border crossing, situated nearly 120km (74 miles) northwest of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, is one of the busiest crossings between the two countries and is used by thousands of people every day.

On Sunday, the Pakistani military said “unprovoked and indiscriminate” firing from the Afghan side at the crossing killed several civilians and wounded more than a dozen others – the latest deadly flare-up at their tense border.

The next day, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told parliament the Afghan authorities had apologised for the firing.

”Provocation was started by Afghanistan. Our forces were repairing the border fence when they were attacked by the Taliban forces. In first round of firing, there were no casualties but in second round, they used heavy artillery and mortars which resulted in the civilian deaths,” he said.

The minister added that officials from both sides met following the incident, in which Afghan authorities assured such an incident would not be repeated.

Kabul said at least one Taliban soldier died in Sunday’s firing while 10 others were injured.

In a tweet on Monday, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, said the repetition of such incidents would be regrettable.

Also on Monday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he will call a meeting to review the situation at the border with Afghanistan.

“The government demands the Afghan government should prevent incidents which could hurt bilateral ties,” he told reporters in Islamabad.

Last month, the Chaman crossing was closed for a week when an Afghan gunman killed a Pakistani security official on November 13.

At least three attackers have been killed by Afghanistan’s security forces after they opened fire at a Kabul hotel popular with Chinese nationals, according to a spokesman for the ruling Taliban.

The unidentified armed men opened fire inside the multi-storey Kabul Longan Hotel in central Kabul on Monday, with witnesses reporting multiple blasts and several bursts of gunfire.

Kabul’s Emergency Hospital, run by an Italian non-profit near the attacked hotel in the Shahr-e-Naw area, reported receiving 21 casualties –  18 injured and three dead on arrival.

Later on Monday, ISIL (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel.

The group said two of its personnel “attacked a big hotel frequented by Chinese diplomats and businessmen in Kabul, where they detonated two explosive devices hidden inside two bags,” one of them targeting a party for Chinese guests and the other targeting the reception hall.

While the firing was continuing inside the hotel, a fire broke out on one of its floors, sources told the Reuters news agency.

A video posted on Twitter by a journalist in Kabul, verified by Reuters, showed smoke billowing out of the building.

The attack took place around 2:30pm local time (10:00 GMT) when armed men targeted the hotel where “common people were staying”, Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said, adding that forces were trying to secure the area.

Residents of the area said the attack was carried out at a building where Chinese and other foreigners usually stay. The shooting continued after they heard a powerful explosion, they said.

The attack came a day after China’s ambassador met the Afghan deputy foreign minister to discuss security-related matters and sought more attention on the security of its embassy.

China, which shares a rugged 76-km (47-mile) border with Afghanistan, has not officially recognised the Taliban government but is one of the few countries to maintain a diplomatic presence there.

Several bombing and shooting attacks have taken place in Afghanistan in recent months, some of which have been claimed by ISIL.

The Taliban, who seized power after United States-led foreign forces withdrew in August 2021, have said they are focused on securing the country.

At least six civilians have been killed by “unprovoked” firing from Afghan forces near the Chaman border, Pakistan’s military said, in the latest deadly flare-up at the border between the neighbouring countries.

The Pakistani army’s media wing said on Sunday that the fire wounded 17 people, and it blamed the casualties on the “unprovoked and indiscriminate fire” of heavy weapons by Afghan forces on civilians.

The violence hitting Chaman in southwestern Pakistan follows a series of deadly incidents and attacks that have raised tensions with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. Chaman is the main border crossing for trade between the two countries.

In Afghanistan, a spokesman for Kandahar’s governor, Attaullah Zaid, appeared to link the clashes between Pakistani and Taliban forces with the construction of new checkpoints on the Afghan side of the border.

Kandahar police spokesman Hafiz Saber said one Afghan soldier was killed and 10 other people, including three civilians, were injured.

Pakistan’s army said troops responded to Afghan fire, but its media wing didn’t give further details. It said Pakistan has approached authorities in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to highlight the severity of the border incident.

A doctor with a government-run hospital in Chaman, Akhtar Mohammad, told The Associated Press that live rounds injured 27 people who were brought into the hospital for treatment. Of these, six died and seven were in critical condition.

‘A big explosion’

A resident on Pakistan’s side of the border, Wali Mohammad, took his wounded cousin to the hospital in Chaman. He said there were a number of explosions followed by rapid gunfire.

“We were in the street like any other day off when suddenly a big explosion was heard and debris hit many people, including one of my cousins,” said Mohammad.

Later in the month, Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul came under gunfire days after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar travelled to Kabul to meet her Afghan counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi.

Pakistani officials called the incident an “assassination attempt” on its envoy there and blamed Taliban officials for the security breach.

Islamabad also has said that Afghanistan’s rulers are sheltering fighters from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) armed group, which carries out deadly attacks on its soil.

The TTP, also known as the Pakistan Taliban, has been fighting the Pakistani state for more than a decade. The armed group, which is ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban, demands the imposition of its readings of Islamic law and the release of its fighters, among other issues.

The TTP has carried out attacks after it ended a months-long ceasefire agreement with Islamabad.

In early November, Sadaf*, a 22-year-old university student, was found guilty of “moral crimes” in a northern Afghan province. She was accused by local Taliban officials of speaking to a man who was not her “mahram” – a male family member.

Since seizing control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed increasing restrictions on women, including gender segregation at universities and public places such as gyms.

“We didn’t know what my punishment would be, and everyone feared that they might kill me,” Sadaf told Al Jazeera.

“I feared they would kill my family too. My mother prayed that the matter would be settled with just whipping,” she said.

The Taliban have been inviting large crowds to public grounds and stadiums to hold public spectacles of punishments such as flogging. On Wednesday, a man was publicly executed in Farah province.

“I estimate that up to 80 people have been whipped since we took over Afghanistan,” Abdul Rahim Rashid, head of press relations at the Afghan Supreme Court, told Al Jazeera.

“Men and women have been whipped for different crimes in Kabul, Logar, Laghman, Bamyan, Takhar and some other provinces,” he added.

The reports of public punishments in recent weeks have brought back memories of the Taliban’s harsh rule in the 1990s when convicts were publicly stoned and beheaded.

The Taliban initially promised women’s rights and media freedom but more than 15 months on, Afghanistan’s new rulers have gone back on these promises. High schools for girls remain shut, women have been squeezed out of public places, and free media is almost non-existent.

The United Nations human rights office said the execution in Farah, the first public execution since the Taliban returned to power, was “disturbing” and called for “an immediate moratorium on any further executions”.

The Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, tweeted on Thursday the international criticism shows outsiders “do not respect the beliefs, laws and internal issues of Muslims, which is an interference in the internal affairs of countries and is condemned.

In a public statement issued on November 14, Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, ordered judges to fully enforce aspects of the group’s hardline interpretation of Islamic law, which includes public executions, stoning, flogging, and amputation of limbs.

‘Framed’

Sadaf, a student of Islamic law, alleged she was wrongly accused and denied a fair trial. The name of her university is not being published for security reasons.

“About a month ago, I was stopped by a local Taliban leader while returning from the university. He wanted to know why I had rejected his son’s marriage proposal,” Sadaf said, adding the same man had approached her father several times before.

“But we rejected them every time because I did not want to marry a Talib [Taliban member],” she said.

Rashid, the head of press relations of the Supreme Court, denied the accusations, saying no decision by the courts was made without evidence.

“The courts study the case files, the accused is brought to the court of appeal, and only after a confession is taken, or the witnesses are presented that a judgement is passed,” he said.

Sadaf said her neighbours tried to convince the Talib to let her go but it was in vain. A local Taliban official later informed her father that she had been found guilty. She was not represented by a lawyer and the verdict was announced in her absence.

“They [Taliban judges] said I would be forgiven if I married Talib’s son but I refused. I would rather die than marry him.

“My mother tried to convince me but my father stood by me, saying ‘it’s better my daughter dies once than die every day’.”

‘Legitimacy of such trials’

The night before the punishment was to be implemented, Sadaf’s family recited the Quran and prayed for her safety.

“I hugged my siblings, kissed my mother and asked for her forgiveness. And I told my father if something happened to me to stay strong and leave this province,” Sadaf said before leaving for a local mosque.

Her neighbours, the Taliban leaders, including the one who levelled the accusation against her, had gathered for the punishment. She was ordered to be flogged publicly.

“They stood in a circle around me. My hands were tied and I was told not to scream because men should not hear women’s voices. And then I was whipped, as my father stood in front of me begging for the Talib to forgive me, apologising to them for a crime I did not commit,” she said.

Human rights organisations are raising concerns over increasing incidences of public lashings and other brutal punishments across Afghanistan.

“The public flogging of women and men is a cruel and shocking return to out-and-out hardline practices by the Taliban. It violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment under international law and should not be carried out under any circumstances,” Samira Hamidi, an Afghan activist and Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, told Al Jazeera.

The UN has raised concerns over the trials where an accused is often arrested, tried, sentenced and punished, all on the same day. Hamidi said it also raised questions about the legitimacy of such trials, conducted in the absence of a functioning justice system.

“The lack of remedies to those arrested – such as access to lawyers, formal legal mechanisms, and court trials – has enabled the Taliban to reimpose their notorious justice using their interpretation of Islamic law, or shariah, as a tool.

‘Deeply patriarchal society’

For women in a deeply patriarchal society such as Afghanistan, such punishments can have an effect much more profound than the lashing itself. “Being a woman flogged in public is, culturally, a direct threat to their lives as well,” Hamidi said.

“These women stand to not just lose social respect but are also vulnerable to domestic violence and mistreatment from their families. They will be judged, dismissed and can even lose their lives for bringing shame to their family and society,” she said.

Cases such as Sadaf’s highlight the extent to which women’s rights have steadily deteriorated in Afghanistan. Women continue to lose access to the legal, political and social rights they had secured over the last 20 years since the Taliban was overthrown in 2001.

Richard Bennett, the UN’s special rapporteur on Afghanistan, called it “the worst country in the world to be a woman or a girl”, while presenting his findings to the General Assembly committee in October.

In Sadaf’s case, the lashings were far from the end of her ordeal. Her family continued to face pressure from the Taliban leader to marry her to his son.

With the help of friends, her family escaped in a car, in the dead of the night, to a different province, where they remain in hiding, facing an uncertain future.

“We don’t know for how long we can remain on the run, but we have to find an escape. Afghanistan has become a big prison where the Taliban can inflict any punishment on you without reason,” Sadaf said from her hiding place inside Afghanistan.

*Sadaf’s name has been changed due to concerns over possible reprisals