Pakistan says it killed 28 militants, Taliban reports three civilian deaths

KABUL/ISLAMABAD, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Pakistan's government said on Monday that airstrikes killed at least 28 militants in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, with one security official saying two Afghan provinces were targeted.

Hours earlier, Afghan Taliban officials accused Islamabad of killing at least three civilians in overnight airstrikes on its territory.

The attacksbroke nearly three months of relative calm.

Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesperson of the Taliban-run Afghan government, said the Afghan side "will respond appropriately to this aggression."

A Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strikes happened in the Afghan provinces of Paktika and Kunar. Pakistan's Information Ministry gave the death toll but its military did not immediately comment.

Relations between the former allies have been strained for years, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of harbouring militants who stage cross-border attacks. Conflict escalated this February and hundredsdied in airstrikes, drone attacks, and artillery fire in the first half of the year.

Afghanistan's Taliban government denies harbouring anti-Pakistani insurgents and says militancy is Pakistan's internal problem.

Thenew airstrikes came after a police facility in the northwestern Pakistani district of Kohat was attacked by Islamist militants on Friday, killing at least 24 people.

Prior militant attacks in Pakistan have often prompted retaliatory strikes from Pakistan.

A separate exchange of fire on Sunday killed six Pakistani soldiers and eight militants in the adjacent district ofHangu near the Afghan border, according to a Pakistani army statement.

At least one house in Kunar province was hit in the strikes on Monday, killing three members of the same family and injuring four others, Taliban deputy spokespersonHamdullah Fitrat said in a post on X.

In Paktika, two locations were bombed, destroying a shop and an unoccupied house, with no casualties, he added.

"Everyone was frightened,"said Mula Khan, a 55-year-old resident who heard the strikes.

WIDENING INSURGENCIES

Pakistan'swidening insurgencies are waged by competing groups with different support bases and ideologies but a common enemy in the Pakistani state.

Last week's attack in Kohatwas claimed by an Islamist militant group calledShura Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen.

It is headed by warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who had once hosted al Qaeda and Arab Islamist fighters in the bordering region, said Abdul Basit, an analyst at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. The group initially focused on attacks against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

At the time, that stood in stark contrast with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its insurgency against the Pakistani government in the northwest.

Bahadur's group turned against Pakistan after a major Pakistani military offensive around 2015 that targeted a safe haven of the group in NorthWaziristan district, Basit said. That pushed the group's fighters into Afghanistan.

The long-term repercussions of that shift are still playing out today, said Basit, as Bahadur's group has become "an umbrella of different militant groups where al Qaeda is the architect and Gul Bahadur is the face."

While the public focus in Pakistan has been on the TTP, which was behind most of the deadly attacks, retaliatory Pakistaniairstrikes have hit both the TTP and Bahadur's hideouts in Afghanistan since late last year, Pakistani officials say.

Afghanistan had launched drones against Pakistan in July, which Islamabad had said its forces had intercepted and shot down.

The worst single incident occurred in March, when more than 400 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike on Kabul, which the Afghan Taliban said targeted a drug rehabilitation centre.

Islamabad denied the charge, saying it "precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure".

Pakistan has a large air force, with 422 combat aircraft and more than 260 helicopters, according to data from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Afghanistan has no fighter jets but is known to possess at least six aircraft and 23 helicopters, and drones that have previously been used in fighting with Pakistan.

(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul and Islamabad newsroom; Writing by Asif Shahzad and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Andrew Cawthorne)