Pakistan on Monday justified its recent air strike in Paktika province of Afghanistan. The government said on Monday that if necessary, it would carry out more such attacks inside Afghan territory to target Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) positions. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s special assistant on political affairs Rana Sanaullah told local media on Monday, “If Afghan soil is used to attack Pakistan, then we have the legal right to continue these operations.”
On December 24, 46 people, including many women and children, were killed in a Pakistani air strike inside Afghanistan. This action of Pakistan was criticized all over the world and it was given a strong warning from the Taliban regime in the war-torn country.
The attack was carried out on parts of Barmal district of Paktika province. This was the second case of direct attack on Afghan civilian territory by Islamabad in 2024. Eight people, including three children, were killed in a similar attack in March 2024.
Sanaullah’s statement comes at a time when Islamabad has intensified its ‘counter-terrorism operations’ against TTP and other ‘anti-state terrorist groups’.
Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing safe haven to TTP rebels and supporting their terrorist activities. However, Kabul has been denying these allegations. The comment is also being seen as a response to repeated threats made by various Taliban leaders against Pakistan since the air strikes. Two days after the air strikes, acting Afghan Foreign Minister Aamir Khan Muttaki said, ‘Afghans will not forget the attack on their territory.’ He said that Pakistani rulers should adopt a balanced policy.
nuclear bomb threat
During his speech at an event organized to mark the 45th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, Muttaki advised Pakistan to ‘learn from the consequences of the Soviet Union and the United States’. He emphasized that Afghanistan will never accept the attack. Muttaki also appealed to the people of Pakistan to stop the wrong policies of their rulers.
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, Afghanistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs, had recently warned that there are fighters in Afghanistan who can act like a “nuclear bomb”. Addressing a graduation ceremony in Kabul on Saturday, Stanikzai said, “Islamabad should not test the patience of its western neighbor. We have fighters with the capability of a nuclear bomb.”
(This news has not been edited by NewsDeskReport team. It is published directly from the syndicate feed.)