Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former U.S. military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, 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 that it's in "open war" with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, 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 from Pakistan's military or government regarding Kabul's claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting. 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 on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday. Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, 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 that 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 both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers. Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer (12-square-mile) area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having sezied it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan's claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports "baseless." Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas. The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning. Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed. Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province. There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.