Pakistan says strikes on Kunar and Helmand killed 22 fighters; Kabul counts nine civilians

Pakistan's information ministry said strikes late on Wednesday destroyed camps and hideouts in two Afghan provinces and killed 22 fighters. Afghanistan's government said the same raids hit houses in Kunar and Helmand, killing nine people, including women and children, and wounding 11.

Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban government in Kabul, posted that the attacks destroyed three houses, one in Shultan district of northeastern Kunar and others in Garmsir district of southern Helmand. He called the strikes an aggression and a crime against accepted principles. Pakistan's ministry, also posting on X, said the targets were hit with precision, that initial reports pointed to 22 fighters killed, and that large stores of weapons and ammunition at the sites were destroyed. It said the raids rested on credible intelligence and named the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Baloch Liberation Army among the groups it was hunting.

Neither figure has been checked on the ground by an outside news organisation. Reuters said it could not independently verify the Afghan count, and Al Jazeera said the same of both claims. The gap between 22 fighters and nine civilians is the whole argument of this war in one night: Islamabad says it is hitting armed camps across a border Kabul will not police, and Kabul says the bombs land on family houses.

What a witness in Garmsir described

An eyewitness in Garmsir, Qudratullah, told the BBC the jets arrived around 03:30 local time, midnight in Britain, and stayed about 30 minutes. He said the household was asleep when the first bomb exploded. After the second, they took the children and left. The third bomb, he said, hit a neighbour's house. Between four and five members of that family were killed, and others were taken to hospital. That account sits closer to Mujahid's version than to Islamabad's. It is still one resident's report from a district that has seen repeated cross-border fire this year.

The timing matters. The raids came after about three months of relative quiet along the Durand Line, following a spring and summer of clashes that both capitals have treated as a war in all but name. Islamabad's complaint is unchanged: it says the TTP uses Afghan soil to stage attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and that Baloch groups do the same toward Balochistan. A TTP ceasefire with the Pakistani state, mediated by the Afghan Taliban in November 2022, collapsed and was followed by a rise in attacks inside Pakistan. Kabul denies hosting either group and calls the militancy an internal Pakistani problem.

The civilian toll already on the books

The UN mission in Afghanistan has documented more than 1,100 civilian deaths and injuries from cross-border violence in 2026 so far. That running total is the number that makes Wednesday night more than a single disputed raid. If Mujahid's nine dead and 11 wounded hold, they add to a ledger that already exceeds a thousand. If Pakistan's claim of empty civilian ground is right, the UN figure still shows how often the same districts absorb the cost of a fight neither side has a mechanism to stop.

Shultan and Garmsir are not random dots. Kunar has been a TTP-linked corridor for years, with valleys that run toward Bajaur and Dir. Garmsir sits on the Helmand river system near the border with Pakistan's Balochistan, a province where the BLA has claimed attacks on security posts and Chinese-linked projects. Hitting both in one night lets Islamabad say it is answering two fronts at once. It also spreads Kabul's response across two regional commands, which is why a single spokesman, rather than a field commander, has carried the Afghan statement.

What neither side has offered

Pakistan's military did not answer a Reuters request for comment in the first hours after the Afghan statement, leaving the information ministry's post as the official account. Kabul has not named the dead or said which agency will investigate the houses. There is no joint border inquiry, no shared casualty list, and no third party on the ground in either district. The last round of talks, held through intermediaries earlier in the year, did not produce a hotline that either side used on Wednesday night.

The practical consequence is immediate for people in those two districts and slower for the two capitals. Families in Garmsir and Shultan have damaged houses and, on the Afghan account, dead relatives. Islamabad has a claim it can show to a domestic audience that has been demanding strikes after attacks in the tribal districts. Kabul has a condemnation it can take to neighbours who have been urging both sides to stop trading fire. Neither statement changes the underlying dispute: Pakistan wants Kabul to arrest or expel named TTP commanders, and Kabul says it will not take orders from Islamabad on armed groups it does not admit to sheltering.

Until one side lets reporters or UN monitors into Shultan and Garmsir, the night of 30 September will sit as two numbers. Twenty-two fighters, or nine civilians and 11 wounded. The houses, at least, are not in dispute. Mujahid said three of them are gone.