According to the army, fighters in Afghanistan fired heavy weapons across the border onto a Pakistani military station, killing three soldiers.
The assailants were engaged in a gunfight in Pakistan’s harsh North Waziristan region, and several people were killed, according to a military statement released on Saturday.
It was unclear which of Afghanistan’s several armed organisations was behind the assault.
The attack comes as Afghanistan has been hit by a slew of explosives in recent days, including a mosque bombing in northern Kunduz province on Friday that killed 33 people, including numerous pupils from a nearby religious school.
Seven students were killed in another strike on the Abdul Rahim Shaheed school in Kabul on Thursday. It reopened on Saturday, with pupils laying roses on the graves of their classmates who had died.
The sharp rise in attacks in Afghanistan – as well as in neighbouring Pakistan – shows the mounting security problem facing Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who surged to power last August in the midst of the chaotic withdrawal of American and NATO soldiers that brought the 20-year war to a close.
The Islamic State in Khorasn Province, an ISIL (ISIS) affiliate that has claimed responsibility for recent strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is presenting an insurmountable obstacle.
The Islamic State in Khorasan Province isn’t the only armed group in Afghanistan contributing to the Taliban government’s security problems.
The Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has intensified its assault on Pakistani military outposts from its Afghan camps, according to the United Nations.
The Taliban has guaranteed that no armed groups will use Afghan soil as a base for attacks on other countries, but Kabul has yet to arrest or hand over any TTP commanders to Pakistan. China’s Uighurs of East Turkistan Movement, which seeks independence for northwest China, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are two other groups working in Afghanistan (IMU).
Pakistan retaliated with bombing operations inside Afghanistan after seven of its troops were killed in an ambush earlier this month, according to villagers in eastern Khost province.
Twenty children were killed in air strikes in Afghanistan’s border regions of Khost and Kunar, according to the UN.
