The office of Pakistan’s prime minister on Friday said that “133 Afghan Taliban” were killed amid renewed clashes on the border.

“Pakistani counter-strikes against targets in Afghanistan continue,” government spokesman Mosharraf Zaidi said in a situation update. “A total of 133 Afghan Taliban are confirmed killed, more than 200 wounded. Many more casualties estimated in strikes in Kabul, Paktia, and Kandahar military targets.”

The spokesman also said that 27 Afghan Taliban posts were destroyed and nine seized.

Armed clashes between Pakistani forces and the Afghan Taliban militia at the border erupted on Thursday, officials on both sides said, with conflicting claims of inflicting heavy military losses on each other.

The clashes broke out at multiple points along the border late in the night, days after Pakistani fighter jets carried out strikes to target Islamist militants blamed for deadly cross-border attacks from their hideouts in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government said the Afghan militia “miscalculated and opened unprovoked fire on multiple locations across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), which is being met with immediate and effective response by Pakistan’s security forces”.

In Kabul, the Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed their forces captured and destroyed several Pakistani outposts and killed numerous troops.

There was no way to independently verify the claims from either side.

Pakistan and Afghanistan exaggerated their military gains the last time their border forces clashed in October last year.

Pakistan accused Afghanistan of sheltering and facilitating the Islamist militants, who are allegedly behind a surge of cross-border attacks, but Kabul rejects the accusations.

The militancy has surged significantly in Pakistan since Afghanistan fell to the Afghan Taliban in 2021.

(dpa/NAN)