PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan declared “open war” Friday on Afghanistan, after the two South Asian neighbors traded overnight attacks in a sharp escalation of their long-running dispute.
Both sides claimed to inflict heavy damage in the renewed fighting, which threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are trying to remobilize.
Tensions between the two countries, which share a 1,600-mile border, have been simmering for months as they struggle to maintain a Qatar-mediated ceasefire they reached in October, with occasional cross-border skirmishes.
Pakistan, which is struggling with a surge in militant attacks since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, says the attackers are using Afghanistan as a base. The Taliban, which seized power as the U.S. withdrew, denies harboring militants.
The latest violence began Thursday night when the Taliban launched what it called retaliatory attacks on military installations in northwest Pakistan.
Residents and government and military officials in Pakistan’s border areas said heavy fighting started around 8 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET), causing panic among residents.
“We had to leave our homes in the middle of the night” as Afghan forces fired rockets and mortar shells from across the border, tribesman Dilbar Khan Afridi told NBC News as he fled the Tirah Valley, a mountainous region in the Khyber district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Hours later, Pakistan said it had struck military targets in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as well as Kandahar and Paktia provinces in response to what it called “unprovoked Afghan attacks.”
The Taliban said its attacks were in retaliation for Pakistan’s deadly strikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan said that those attacks targeted militants and that at least 70 were killed, while Afghanistan said dozens of civilians were killed, including women and children.
Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Friday that since regaining power in 2021, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan into a “proxy for India” — Pakistan’s archrival — and made it a gathering place for militants who started “exporting terrorism.”
“Our cup of patience has overflowed,” Asif said on X. “Now it is open war between us and you.”
There were conflicting claims from the two sides Friday about the damage and casualties they inflicted on each other.
Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesperson, later told reporters that at least 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 274 Taliban officials and militants had been killed since Thursday night, according to Reuters. He did not specify where the casualties occurred and NBC News could not independently verify this claim.
He said the operation was continuing on the direction of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that eight Taliban fighters had been killed and 11 wounded in Nangarhar province.
He said Afghanistan's earlier attack on Pakistan killed 55 Pakistani soldiers, some of whose bodies were taken to Afghanistan, and others were captured alive. Nineteen Pakistani army posts were seized, he said.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to protect civilians and “to continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, also called for a peaceful resolution. Pakistan and Afghanistan have yet to reach a formal agreement after several rounds of peace talks failed in November, following the October ceasefire.
“This is a terrible dynamic that must stop,” Khalilzad said on X. “Innocent Afghans and Pakistanis are getting injured or killed.”
Russia is the only country to officially recognise the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and also has good relations with Pakistan, also called for an end to the fighting. “Like everyone else, we are closely monitoring this situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The latest attacks are a “dangerous escalation” that take the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan into “uncharted territory,” said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Frustrated by Afghanistan’s refusal to disown the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP — a militant group Pakistan blames for much of the violence that is separate from but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban — Pakistan is now attacking not just border areas but cities, and not just militants but the Taliban government that is protecting them, Basit said.
The latest attacks have brought the conflict to a new level, Basit said, and any de-escalation is likely to be temporary “unless a miracle happens.”
With the Taliban lacking conventional capabilities such as an air force or missiles, that could mean sending proxies as suicide bombers in Pakistani cities as the end of winter leads into the peak season for attacks, Basit said.
“I think summer has arrived early in 2026, and we are looking at a bloody summer,” he said.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan also has implications far beyond the region, Basit said. Tensions between the two countries strengthen global terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and they are not likely to contain their attacks to South Asia.
“If they get strengthened, that undermines U.S. homeland security as well,” he said.
