The Qatar-mediated fragile ceasefire of October 2025 appears to have made little impact on the increasing hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, hours after Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan.
Pakistan media reports claimed that the country's forces carried out air strikes—Operation Ghazab lil Haq— targeting major military installations in Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktia in Afghanistan, destroying two brigade headquarters in Kabul and one brigade headquarters and one corps headquarters in Kandahar. Over 130 Taliban fighters were reportedly killed in the attack, Pakistan media reports claimed.
According to Pakistan TV, the country's Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar confirmed that Pakistan’s Air Force carried out airstrikes in Kabul, Kandahar, and Paktia, destroying Taliban posts, brigade headquarters, and ammunition depots. A Dawn report quoted Tarar as saying that as many as 133 Afghan Taliban operatives had been killed and more than 200 were injured in the attacks.
“Twenty-seven posts of the Afghan Taliban regime were destroyed, nine posts were captured,” the minister claimed.
Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, in a social media post, declared "open war" on the Afghan Taliban government, saying, "Pakistan made every effort to keep the situation normal through direct means and through friendly countries. It engaged in full-fledged diplomacy."
"Our cup of patience has overflowed. Now it is open war between us and you," he wrote, reports CNN-IBN.
Asif further alleged that the Taliban made Afghanistan a colony of India and said, "They gathered terrorists from all over the world in Afghanistan and started exporting terrorism."
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned that the response of his country's armed forces had been "comprehensive and decisive." "Those who mistake our peace for weakness will face a strong response — and no one will be beyond reach,” he was quoted as saying.
Afghanistan said its military launched its attack across the border into Pakistan late Thursday in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas on Sunday, and claimed to have captured more than a dozen Pakistani army posts.
Afghanistan's Defense Ministry claimed that 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed, including some whose bodies had been taken into Afghanistan, while several others were captured alive. It added that 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases were destroyed, and that the fighting had ended at midnight.
Tarar, however, said only two Pakistani soldiers were killed and three others were injured.
In the past few months, tension has been high between the two neighbors, with deadly border clashes in October leading to the death of several soldiers, civilians, and suspected militants.
While the ceasefire between the two countries has largely held, the two sides have occasionally traded fire across the border. Several rounds of peace talks in November failed to produce a formal agreement.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s military launched strikes along the Afghanistan border, stating that at least 70 militants were killed in the operation.
Afghanistan denied the claim, asserting that dozens of civilians, including women and children, had died in the attack. The defense ministry said the attacks hit “various civilian areas” in eastern Afghanistan, including a religious madrassa and multiple homes, and described the strikes as a breach of Afghanistan’s airspace and sovereignty.
