3 cricketers among 10 killed as Pakistan launches fresh attack on Afghanistan, Taliban declares truce ‘broken’

At least 10 people, including three Afghan cricketers, were killed in a series of Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan’s southeastern Pktika province; This was a violation of the ceasefire agreement recently reached between the two neighboring countries.

Former allies Pakistan and Afghanistan have been locked in a week of fierce fighting, during which both countries claimed scores of deaths on the other side. The Taliban, the insurgent group that controls Afghanistan, claims that Pakistan is violating a 48-hour ceasefire agreed on Wednesday by launching new attacks.

“Pakistan broke the ceasefire and bombed three sites in Pktika province,” a senior Taliban official told AFP on condition of anonymity. “Afghanistan will retaliate”

At least ten citizens were killed and twelve others were injured, according to a state hospital official. Two children were among the dead Afghans. A senior security official in Pakistan told AFP that troops “conducted precision airstrikes” on the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group, a local group linked to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in the Afghan border areas.

Separately, the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) withdrew from the triangular T20 series with Pakistan and Sri Lanka, scheduled to begin on November 17, after Pakistan announced the killing of three Afghan cricketers in Pktika province on Saturday.

Pakistan and Afghanistan

The air strikes came after Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed on Friday to extend a 48-hour ceasefire until the end of talks in Doha, sources told Reuters. This incident occurred just hours after the horrific suicide attack near the neighboring district of North Waziristan that killed seven Pakistani soldiers and injured thirteen others. Pakistan blamed Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group.

Pakistani security sources reported that terrorists attacked a military base, with two attackers trying to run towards the complex before being shot dead and one attacker crashing an explosives-laden vehicle into the border wall.

Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a local television news program in Pashto later in the day that Kabul had ordered his forces to maintain a ceasefire unless Pakistan launched an attack.

As the Taliban foreign minister embarked on a trip to India last weekend, the level of violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan rose sharply. Both sides suffered many deaths as a result of intense ground clashes between forces of both countries and air strikes by Islamabad along the disputed border.

The Taliban-led government has come under fire from Pakistan for allegedly not keeping the militants under control, especially from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has increased its attacks within the country and allegedly sheltered it. Kabul responded by denying the accusations and asserting that Pakistan was responsible for its own security.

Having lost patience with Afghanistan after a series of militant attacks, Pakistan has “retaliated”, according to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who said on Thursday that his country was ready to start negotiations to end the situation.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said he could help resolve the dispute. “I understand that Pakistan is attacking or there is an attack on Afghanistan. That’s an easy problem for me to solve, if I have to solve it,” he said.