Pakistani and Afghan Taliban forces exchanged fire in heavy clashes on Saturday 17 October near Dand Patan district in Afghanistan's Paktia province, opposite Kurram district in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Local sources say both sides fired, and casualties have not been independently confirmed.
Pakistani officials claim that some Afghan Taliban personnel were killed and border positions damaged. That claim is unverified, and Taliban authorities had given no detailed public account. A rocket reportedly hit a residential area in Dand Patan, and it is unclear who fired it. There are no figures for posts destroyed or residents displaced.
A pattern of border fighting
The clashes continue a pattern of fighting since 5 October, mostly exchanges of fire between Paktia and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On 10 October, Pakistan's military media wing said its forces killed 12 militants and Afghan Taliban fighters trying to infiltrate from Afghanistan, with one Pakistani soldier killed, and that Taliban border posts fired to support the infiltration. A Taliban army corps said Pakistan fired first and that its forces suffered no casualties. Both accounts are unverified.
The fighting followed a suicide attack in north-western Pakistan on 18 September that killed 31 people and injured more than 100, which a militant alliance claimed. Islamabad blames the Taliban for sheltering the Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, and other militants, and Kabul rejects the allegation. Talks among regional governments in Moscow on 5 October ended without a joint statement, after Russia said the Taliban objected to the draft repeatedly linking Afghanistan with terrorism.
Figures put the number of people killed in Pakistani attacks in Afghanistan over the past year at more than 500. A human rights investigator has called for an independent inquiry into Pakistani attacks that he said may constitute war crimes.
