Afghanistan says it thwarted a Pakistani airstrike attempt on Bagram Air Base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan said Sunday it had thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former U.S. military base north of Kabul, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.

The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring it is in “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant groups, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.

Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India. Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.

On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m. The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.

There was no immediate response to the claim from Pakistan.

Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a U.S. presence at the base.

The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.

Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.

The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation Afghanistan denies.

After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”

In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and each side puts its own casualties at drastically lower numbers.

Afghan officials said fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.

The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital of Jalalabad and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.

Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He claimed two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.

Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday night, killing a woman and a child, while a mortar killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.

There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.

___

Becatoros contributed from Athens, Greece.