The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said on Monday that at least 28 Afghan civilians were killed by Pakistani airstrikes over the weekend, plus another 49 injured.

The Taliban junta claimed at least 38 civilians were killed in the strikes, while Pakistan said it killed at least 29 militants.

Pakistani Information Minister Mattaullah Tarar also claimed the strikes destroyed “large quantities” of weapons and ammunition stockpiled by militants along the border. He insisted the strikes were “precisely” directed against “terrorist camps and safe havens.”

The Afghan Taliban regime said most of the civilian casualties occurred when Pakistani jets bombed a residential building in the province of Paktia. The casualty count swelled when a second strike hit the same area, even as volunteers were attempting to help survivors of the first strike.

“Everyone was asleep when the aircraft came and began attacking this house. Inside the house were children, women, ​men, and elderly people,” a Paktia resident said.

Another local resident told the BBC he could not “put into words the condition of the children I saw at the hospital, or the screams of their parents and siblings.”

Pakistan said the three powerful airstrikes it conducted on Sunday were directed at members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban or TTP – an Islamist insurgency that hopes to overthrow Pakistan’s secular government and replace it with an Islamic “caliphate” modeled on the Taliban regime.

TTP has been waging terrorist warfare against Pakistan’s government for years, including frequent skirmishes in the notorious Afghan border region. Afghan Taliban militants were known to hide on the Pakistani side of the border during their long guerrilla war against United States and coalition forces, which ended with President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

The conflict between Pakistan and the insurgents heated up considerably after Biden’s pullout and Pakistani commanders complained that some of the American equipment abandoned by Biden in Afghanistan was turning up in the hands of the terrorists. Islamabad also grew increasingly angry at the Taliban junta for ignoring, indulging, or assisting the insurgents – a sharp reversal from Pakistan’s support of the Afghan Taliban during the U.S. occupation.

The Afghan Taliban, in turn, was angered when Pakistan began deporting large numbers of Afghan migrants from the border region in 2023, deeming them an intolerable security threat. In October 2025, these simmering animosities boiled over, and Pakistan began launching airstrikes against TTP positions on Afghan soil. The Taliban denounced these strikes as a “reprehensible” violation of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity.

The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has continued with more skirmishes, airstrikes, and cross-border artillery fire over the past nine months. The Taliban generally claims that most of the people killed by Pakistani strikes are innocent civilians, while Pakistan insists they were TTP fighters and sympathizers. The regime in Kabul insists it has no ties to TTP, and the insurgency is purely a matter of Pakistan’s internal security.

In addition to the airstrikes, Pakistani officials said they killed four militants in ground actions in Pakistan’s northwestern border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

These militants belonged to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an exceptionally violent TTP splinter group that is also aligned with the Islamic State. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for a gun and bomb attack on Friday night against the Sindh Rangers, also known as the Pakistani Rangers, a paramilitary militia. The attack was cited by Pakistan’s information minister as a justification for Sunday’s airstrikes.

“Pakistan has always strived for maintaining peace and stability in the region, but at the same time shall not compromise on the safety and security of our citizens, which remains our top priority,” the minister said.

The Taliban Foreign Ministry summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affairs in Kabul on Monday to lodge a formal complaint against the actions of “Pakistan’s invading military regime,” condemning the airstrikes as a “crime against humanity.”

“We condemn this aggression and cowardly act in the strongest terms, and consider it a crime and a barbaric act,”  Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed “deep concern” over the hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan on Monday, calling for “an immediate cessation of hostilities and the protection of civilians.”

Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric cited the UNAMA report on civilian casualties and said the attacks also displaced a large number of civilians.