KABUL, Afghanistan (Dispatches) — Afghanistan said on Sunday that its forces killed 28 fighters and captured 32 others, including alleged members of the Daesh terrorist group said to have crossed from neighboring Pakistan.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said in a post on X that the fighters were killed or captured on Saturday in Kamdesh district in the northeastern province of Nuristan. It alleged that several Daesh-affiliated groups had been sent from Pakistan with the support of Pakistani authorities “with the aim of carrying out acts of subversion and creating insecurity.”
Afghanistan does not recognize its frontier with Pakistan as an international border. The countries share a 2,611-kilometer (1,622-mile) boundary known as the Durand Line.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information rejected the allegations as “frivolous, baseless and devoid of any truth.” In a post on X, it said Pakistan “categorically rejects” claims that its security forces or intelligence agencies were involved in clashes in Nuristan or elsewhere in Afghanistan. It also denied recruiting or training former Afghan security personnel or facilitating Daesh or other militants.
The ministry said Afghanistan had provided no evidence to support its allegations, including identities, documents, communications or forensic material. It dismissed a video circulating on social media as showing only a few unarmed people and described it as part of a “pre-planned video shoot” by Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
Pakistan said the presence and activities of militant groups in Afghanistan had been documented in reports by the United Nations and other international organizations. It accused Kabul of trying to “manufacture a Pakistani connection” to obscure what it described as the continued presence of militants in Afghanistan.
Pakistan frequently accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of allowing the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, to operate from Afghan territory and carry out attacks inside Pakistan. The TTP is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban but is allied with it. Kabul denies providing the group a safe haven and has rejected Pakistan’s accusations.
The latest hostilities followed Pakistani airstrikes Monday on sites in eastern Afghanistan that Pakistan described as militant hideouts. Pakistan said the strikes killed 28 militants, while Afghan authorities said three civilians were killed, a toll confirmed by the United Nations.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry alleged that those involved in the Nuristan incursion were former Afghan military members from the ousted government. It claimed Pakistani intelligence lured them with promises of foreign asylum and high salaries, then trained them in Pakistani military camps and sent them back to destabilize Nuristan, which borders Pakistan’s Chitral district.