Pakistan rejects Afghan Taliban's claims of civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations

Dawn · 26/10/2026، 10:31:58 AM

The Foreign Office (FO) on Monday rejected allegations made by the Afghan Taliban government regarding civilian casualties in Islamabad’s counterterrorism campaign in the neighbouring country, maintaining that Pakistan’s conduct always “reflected restraint” and the response was “proportionate to the level of threat”. The Afghan Taliban have repeatedly claimed civilian casualties in Pakistani strikes in Afghanistan; Pakistani authorities have denied the accusations, holding that they target military and terrorist infrastructure. Recently, a spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed in an interview with CNN that 1,119 Afghan civilians were killed or injured in Pakistani military strikes in Afghanistan since late 2021, according to Afghan media. In a statement issued on Monday, the FO rejected the “baseless and unsubstantiated” allegations regarding civilian casualties attributed to Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations. “Disinformation and misleading narratives will neither obscure the threat posed by the terrorist networks operating from Afghan territory nor absolve the Afghan Taliban regime of its responsibility to prevent Afghan soil from being used to plan and launch attacks against Pakistan,” the FO said, adding that attacks emanating from Afghan soil had claimed more than 3,500 casualties in 2026. It further said that various relevant United Nations mechanisms had reported the situation as well, and the issue had been raised as a serious concern for the international community. The FO noted that the Afghan Taliban continued to “shelter with impunity a large number of terrorist organisations, including the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and their affiliates, which continue to pose a serious threat to the peace and stability of the region and beyond”. It said that thousands of Pakistani civilians had been martyred in terrorist attacks, which it said were “planned, financed, supported and carried out”