Taliban | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan Army on Tuesday rejected Taliban accusations that its forces carried out over-night airstrikes inside Afghanistan’s Khost province, after an explosion killed 10 civilians, including nine children.

Zabiullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, claimed on Tuesday that Pakistan had carried out overnight strikes in the neighbouring country. In a post on social media platform X, he said that Pakistan had “bombed” Khost province, and carried out air strikes in Kunar and Paktika provinces. No official statement has been issued by Pakistan thus far. The strike was reported the same day a deadly suicide attack on the Federal Constabulary headquarters saw three personnel embrace martyrdom and 12 sustain injuries. Pakistan’s bilateral relations with Afghanistan have come under strain in recent times as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains the main point of contention between the two countries. Pakistan has demanded that the rulers in Kabul take action to stop cross-border terrorism, but the Afghan Taliban deny Islamabad’s allegations of terrorists being allowed to use Afghan soil to carry out attacks in Pakistan. During a process of dialogue, which followed border clashes bet...

Pakistan and the European Union (EU) on Saturday urged the Taliban administration to take “serious and practical” steps to eliminate terrorism, stressing that peace in Afghanistan is essential for regional stability.

The Foreign Office (FO) has warned that terrorist attacks on Pakistan have increased since the Taliban assumed power in Afghanistan.

Defence minister says any terrorist attack or suicide bombing inside Pakistan shall give Taliban bitter taste of misadventures Info minister says dialogue failed as Taliban resorted to blame game.

Istanbul talks collapse as Taliban remain intransigent

• Former ISI chief claims it was his own countrymen, not Pakistan, that handed Afghan envoy Mullah Zaeef over to the Americans • Retired Gen Ehsanul Haq says Zaeef insisted on remaining in Islamabad, despite warnings from Pakistani officials ISLAMABAD: Over 20 years after his now-infamous handover to American forces following their invasion of Afghan­istan, a former Pakistani spymaster has claimed that it was his own countrymen, and not Pakistan, that handed over former Taliban ambassador Abdus Salam Zaeef to the US. The claim, which comes in the midst of an escalating fracas with a resurgent Taliban in Kabul, was made by retired Gen Ehsanul Haq, who took over the reins of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) following the September 11, 2001 attacks. For years, it was believed that Zaeef — who was the Afghan Taliban regime’s envoy to Islam­abad at the time of the 9/11 atta­cks — was handed over to the Americans in violation of international law. In his book, My Life With The Taliban, the former envoy had asserte...

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Monday that the ceasefire agreement between Islamabad and Kabul was linked to the Afghan Taliban’s ability to rein in terrorists attacking Pakistan from neighbouring soil. The two countries agreed to a ceasefire in Doha at the weekend after days of border clashes that killed dozens, the worst such violence since the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 2021. Ground fighting between the one-time allies and Pakistani airstrikes across their contested 2,600-kilometre frontier were triggered after Islamabad demanded that Kabul control terrorists it says operate from safe havens in Afghanistan. “Anything coming from Afghanistan will be [a] violation of this agreement,” Asif said in his office at Parliament in Islamabad. “Everything hinges on this one clause.” The Taliban administration and Afghanistan’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “In the agreement signed by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkiye and Qatar, it was clearly spelled out that there wo...

This screengrab shows Taliban posts destroyed after unprovoked firing in Kurram on Tuesday.

Twenty-three Pakistani troops have been martyred and 200 Taliban and affiliated terrorists have been killed in border clashes following an attack from the Afghan side, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement on Sunday. The statement comes after overnight skirmishes between the two sides, which began “on the night of Oct 11/12, 2025, [after] Afghan Taliban and India-sponsored Fitna-al-Khawarij launched an unprovoked attack on Pakistan, along the Pak-Afghan border,” the ISPR statement said. Fitna-al-Khawarij is a term the state uses for terrorists belonging to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) while Fitna-al-Hindustan is a term designated by the state for terrorist organisations in Balo­chistan. Key developments ISPR says 23 security personnel have been martyred and 29 injured More than 200 Taliban and affiliated terrorists have been neutralised, says military’s media wing 21 hostile positions on the Afghan side of the border were also briefly physically captured and multiple te...

Troops eliminate over 200 Taliban, terrorists 21 Afghan posts captured, destroyed 23 soldiers embrace Shahadat i

Pakistan has issued a stern warning to the Afghan Taliban government, cautioning that any future terrorist attack in Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will trigger direct military strikes on Taliban posts across the border, security sources said on Sunday.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has welcomed the recent stance by Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan against the establishment of foreign military bases in and around Afghanistan. This position was affirmed in a joint statement released after foreign ministers from the four countries met on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York. They emphasised respect for Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and said re-establishment of foreign military bases is “not conducive to regional peace and security.” According to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government, his country not only welcomed the stance of the four countries but said that “Afghanistan will not allow its territory to be used against other countries, nor permit armed groups to operate from its soil.” While the joint statement did not refer to any specific country seeking bases in Afghanistan, it follows one by US President Donald Trump where he said Washington was trying to get...

Taliban restricts internet and bans women from higher and medical education, cutting off access to learning

An elderly British couple detained in Afghanistan for almost eight months were released on Friday, the Taliban authorities said, after pressure built to free the pair due to fears over their health. Taliban officials have refused to detail why Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife Barbara, 76, were arrested in February as they were returning to their home. “We’ve been treated very well. We’re looking forward to seeing our children,” said Barbara, in a red headscarf, standing next to her bearded husband, near a plane on the tarmac of Kabul airport. “We are looking forward to returning to Afghanistan if we can. We are Afghan citizens,” she added, after Qatar-facilitated negotiations for their release. The couple were married in Kabul in 1970, and have spent almost two decades living in Afghanistan, running educational programmes for women and children. They also became official Afghan citizens. When the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the couple remained in Afghanistan against the advice of the British embassy. F...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has asked Taliban authorities to lift restrictions on Afghan female aid workers, allowing them to travel without male guardians and help women struggling to access care after a powerful earthquake killed 2,200 people in eastern Afghanistan. “A very big issue now is the increasing paucity of female staff in these places,” Dr Mukta Sharma, the deputy representative of WHO’s Afghanistan office, told Reuters. She estimated around 90 per cent of medical staff in the area were male, and the remaining 10pc were often midwives and nurses, rather than doctors, who could treat severe wounds. This was hampering care as women were uncomfortable or afraid to interact with male staff and travel alone to receive care. The September 1 magnitude-6 quake and its aftershocks injured more than 3,600 people and left thousands homeless in a country already dealing with severe aid cuts and a slew of humanitarian crises since the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces left. The Afghan health ...

The Taliban government said on Thursday it had not arrested or monitored Afghans involved in a secret British resettlement plan after a data breach was revealed this week. Thousands of Afghans who worked with the United Kingdom were brought to Britain with their families in a secret programme after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, the UK government revealed on Tuesday. The scheme was only revealed after the UK High Court lifted a super-gag order banning any reports of the events. UK Defence Minister John Healey said the leak was not revealed because of the risk that the Taliban authorities would obtain the data set and the lives of Afghans would be put at risk. “Nobody has been arrested for their past actions, nobody has been killed and nobody is being monitored for that,” the Afghan government’s deputy spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, told reporters on Thursday. “Reports of investigation and monitoring of a few people whose data has been leaked are false.” After the Taliban swept back to power in 2021...

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity. ICC judges said in a statement there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “have committed … the crime against humanity of persecution … on gender grounds”. “While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,” the court said. The court said the alleged crimes had been committed between August 15, 2021, when the Taliban seized power and continued until at least January 20, 2025. The Taliban had “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion, ICC judges said. “In addition, other persons were...

Russia has officially recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan as it seeks closer ties with Kabul’s leadership, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday. Moscow’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told the state news agency Ria Novosti that the government had “recognised” the Taliban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Russia’s […]