Afghanistan retaliates after Pakistani airstrikes kill 8

Eight civilians were killed on Monday in "reckless" airstrikes by Pakistan's military in the border regions of Afghanistan, prompting Afghan forces to retaliate against Pakistani military outposts, Taliban officials said.

Border tensions between the two countries have steadily escalated since the Taliban government seized power in 2021, with Islamabad claiming militant groups are carrying out regular attacks from Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Pakistani aircraft "bombed civilian homes" in Khost and Paktika provinces near the border with Pakistan at around 3am (2230 GMT Sunday), adding that all of the dead were women and children.

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Afghanistan's defence ministry said its border forces retaliated by targeting Pakistan's military posts along the border with "heavy weapons".

Cross-border skirmishes in the region were reported by both sides on Monday, the latest in a string of incidents on the disputed frontier.

The Taliban government "strongly condemns these attacks and calls this reckless action a violation of Afghanistan's sovereignty", Mujahid said in his statement.

"Such incidents can have very bad consequences which will be out (of) Pakistan's control."

Pakistan's foreign ministry confirmed on Monday it had carried out "anti-terrorist operations in the border regions inside Afghanistan".

It said in a statement it was targeting the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, one of several factions of the homegrown Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), that are responsible for a surge in border violence against police and security officials.

The strikes prompted a call from the United States for Pakistan, once a key ally in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, to "exercise restraint".

"We urge the Taliban to ensure that terrorist attacks are not launched from Afghan soil and we urge Pakistan to exercise restraint and ensure civilians are not harmed in their counterterrorism efforts," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

Malak Noor Khan, a tribal elder in the Sperah district of Khost, said he saw at least four explosives dropped from drones and jets and that multiple homes were destroyed, one with a woman and her children inside.

"When the drone came first, we all, including women and children, left our homes and went into the trees on the mountainside, it was very cold as there was snow on the ground," he told AFP.

A local government official in Pakistan's border regions, who asked not to be identified, told AFP residents had been instructed to evacuate the area during the skirmishes.

Islamabad has accused Kabul's Taliban government of harbouring militant fighters, allowing them to strike on Pakistani soil with impunity.