Residents in eastern Afghanistan buried nine people on Sunday who were killed in Pakistani airstrikes late Saturday night in Behsud district of Nangarhar province, as rescue efforts continued for others still trapped beneath the debris of a destroyed home.
Local sources in Nangarhar said the victims were laid to rest in the village of Gardi Kas, where one of the strikes hit a residential compound shortly before midnight.
Taliban officials have said at least 17 civilians were killed in the attack, including 11 children. Quraishi Badloon, the Taliban’s director of information and culture in Nangarhar, said six bodies remained under the rubble as of Sunday.
According to Taliban police officials, the airstrike struck the home of a man identified as Shahabuddin, burying 23 members of his family beneath the collapsed structure. Five people were pulled out alive but wounded, while rescue teams continued searching for others feared dead.
The strikes were part of a broader wave of air attacks that Pakistan acknowledged carrying out late Saturday in parts of Nangarhar and neighboring Paktika province. Pakistani officials said the targets were “hideouts of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-K,” the Islamic State’s regional affiliate.
In a statement, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting described the strikes as “retaliatory,” saying they were conducted in response to recent suicide bombings and car bomb attacks during Ramadan, including attacks in Islamabad, Bajaur and Bannu. Pakistani authorities said those attacks were claimed by the TTP and ISIS-K.
Taliban officials rejected Pakistan’s account, accusing Islamabad of targeting civilian areas.
In a statement, the Taliban’s Ministry of Defense condemned the strikes as attacks on “civilian targets and religious centers” and said the Taliban would respond at an “appropriate time” with a “calculated” reaction. The ministry said repeated cross-border attacks would not conceal what it described as Pakistan’s internal security failures.
The airstrikes, which residents said occurred around midnight, targeted areas in Behsud, Khogyani and Ghani Khil districts in Nangarhar, as well as Barmal district in Paktika. Independent verification of casualty figures has not been possible.
The incident marks one of the deadliest cross-border episodes in recent months between Pakistan and the Taliban, amid mounting tensions over militant violence along their shared frontier.
Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Taliban of allowing TTP fighters to operate from Afghanistan’s territory — a charge Taliban officials deny. The latest strikes threaten to deepen a volatile relationship that has deteriorated sharply in recent months.
