ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of families were fleeing from both sides of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan on Monday, officials said, as Islamabad continued a crackdown on extremists after multiple attacks last week raised fears of a militant resurgence.
Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of harbouring the militants who carried out last week’s attacks, which killed more than 100 people across the country.
The military said it used heavy artillery to fire at militant hideouts in Afghanistan on Monday, after carrying out airstrikes on both sides of the border over the weekend.
Officials on the Afghan side said at least six people had been killed, and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said the firing had displaced up to 200 families.
A Pakistani security source told AFP that up to 700 Pakistani families were being evacuated from along the border in Khyber tribal district “to protect them from any retaliatory attack”.
On Friday, Pakistan gave Afghanistan a list of 76 “Afghan-based” militants and demanded that Kabul take action against them. In a tit-for-tat move on Monday, Afghanistan supplied Islamabad with a list of 85 militants it said were sheltering in Pakistan, calling for similar action. Pakistan has already closed the two main gates along its porous border with Afghanistan, Torkham at the Khyber Pass and Chaman in Balochistan. Officials said they would remain closed “indefinitely”. The spike in tensions was triggered by last week’s assaults, the deadliest of which was a suicide attack at a crowded Sufi shrine in Sindh on Thursday which killed 90 people, according to a new official toll, and which was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
A series of other attacks were apparently coordinated by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), including a bombing in Lahore which killed 14 people and wounded dozens on February 13.
The emergence of IS and a TTP resurgence would be a major blow to Pakistan, which had enjoyed a dramatic improvement in security over the past two years after a military-led crackdown begun in 2014.
.jpg)
.jpg)