ISLAMABAD, Feb. 27, 2026 — Pakistan said it had entered an “open war” with Afghanistan after a new wave of cross-border attacks and Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan targets, a sharp escalation reported by Reuters and confirmed by the BBC.
Afghan authorities said their forces launched retaliatory strikes on Pakistani military posts late Thursday after earlier Pakistani raids along the border, while Pakistan said Friday’s strikes in Kabul and other provinces hit Taliban military installations, according to the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
Strikes hit Kabul and border areas
Pakistan’s defense minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said Islamabad’s patience had run out and described the confrontation as open war, while Pakistani officials said targets included Taliban positions in Kabul, Kandahar and the southeast, the BBC reported, and Reuters said.
Both sides issued sharply different casualty claims and said they had struck military targets; Reuters and the BBC noted that those figures could not be independently verified amid the fast-moving clashes.
Mediation efforts return
Qatar again moved to mediate, with officials contacting the foreign ministers of both countries after overnight fighting, the AP reported, a step also reflected in Reuters’ account.
The escalation comes months after a Qatari-brokered ceasefire in October and failed follow-up talks in Turkey, with border skirmishes persisting since then, according to the AP and the BBC.
Tensions over militants and ties
Pakistan has long accused the Taliban government of harboring militants who attack across the border and has criticized Kabul’s growing links with India, a dispute outlined by AP and echoed in CBC’s coverage.
Afghan officials say their strikes were a message that they will respond to Pakistani actions and accuse Islamabad of avoiding dialogue, language cited by the AP and Al Jazeera.
While the Taliban said it was ready to resolve issues through dialogue, Pakistani and Afghan officials continued to trade blame as the fighting spread beyond the immediate frontier, Reuters reported.
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Image: “Kabul TV Hill view” by Sven Dirks, Wien, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kabul_TV_Hill_view.jpg. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0. Modifications: cropped and resized to 1920×1080 (16:9).