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KABUL: The UN mission to Afghanistan on Thursday called for an investigation into Pakistani air strikes in Afghanistan, in which the Taliban government said 46 people were killed, including civilians.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it had “received credible reports that dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed in airstrikes by Pakistan’s military forces in Paktika province, Afghanistan, on 24 December.”
“International law obliges military forces to take necessary precautions to prevent civilian harm,” the agency said in a statement, adding an “investigation is needed to ensure accountability.”
The Taliban government said the 46 deceased were mainly women and children, with another six wounded, mostly children.
An AFP journalist saw several wounded children in a hospital in the provincial capital Sharan, including one receiving an IV and another with a bandaged head.
A Pakistan security official told AFP on Wednesday the bombardment had targeted “terrorist hideouts” and killed at least 20 militants, saying claims that “civilians are being harmed are baseless and misleading.”
On a press trip to the area organized by Taliban authorities, AFP journalists saw four mud brick buildings reduced to rubble in three sites around 20-30 kilometers (10-20 miles) from the Pakistan border.
AFP spoke to multiple residents who said the strikes hit in the late evening, breaking doors and windows in villages and destroying homes and an Islamic school.
Several residents reported pulling bodies from the rubble after strikes targeted houses, killing multiple members of the same families.
Afghanistan’s Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Noorullah Noori called the attack “a brutal, arrogant invasion.”
“This is unacceptable and won’t be left unanswered,” he said during the site visit.
Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch did not confirm the strikes but told a media briefing on Thursday: “Our security personnel conduct operations in border areas to protect Pakistani from terror groups, including TTP.”
She was referring to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — Pakistan’s homegrown Taliban group which shares a common ideology with its Afghan counterpart.
The TTP last week claimed a raid on an army outpost near the border with Afghanistan in which Pakistan said 16 soldiers were killed.
Baloch said Pakistan prioritized dialogue with Afghanistan, and that Islamabad’s special envoy, Sadiq Khan, was in Kabul meeting with officials where “matters of security” and “terror groups including TTP” were discussed.
The strikes were the latest spike in hostilities on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with border tensions between the two countries escalating since the Taliban government seized power in 2021.
Islamabad has accused Kabul’s authorities of harboring militant fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity — allegations Kabul denies.

MADRID: At least 10,457 migrants died or disappeared while trying to reach Spain by sea in 2024, an NGO said Thursday, more than 50 percent more than last year and the most since it began keeping a tally in 2007.
The 58-percent increase includes 1,538 children and 421 women, migrants rights group Caminando Fronteras or Walking Borders said in a report which covers the period from January 1 to December 5, 2024.
It amounts to an average of 30 deaths per day, up from around 18 in 2023.
The group compiles its data from hotlines set up for migrants on vessels in trouble to call for help, families of migrants who went missing and from official rescue statistics.
It blamed the use of flimsy boats and increasingly dangerous routes as well as the insufficient capacity of maritime rescue services for the surge in deaths.
“These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems. More than 10,400 people dead or missing in a single year is an unacceptable tragedy,” the group’s founder, Helena Maleno, said in a statement.
The victims were from 28 nations, mostly in Africa, but also from Iraq and Pakistan.
The vast majority of the fatalities — 9,757 — took place on the Atlantic migration route from Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, which has received a record number of migrants for the second year in a row.
Seven migrant boats landed in the archipelago on Wednesday, Christmas Day, Spain’s maritime rescue service said on social media site X.
At their closest point, the Canaries lie 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the coast of North Africa. The shortest route is between the coastal town of Tarfaya in southern Morocco and the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries.
But the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands is particularly dangerous because of strong currents.
Along with Italy and Greece, Spain is one of the three major European gateways for migrant arrivals.
According to the interior ministry, 60,216 migrants entered Spain irregularly between January 1 and December 15 — a 14.5 percent increase over the same time last year.
The majority, over 70 percent, landed in the Canaries.