Latest editorial
Afghans prepare the body of a man killed during an overnight exchange of fire between Afghan and Pakistani forces along the border in Spin Boldak, Kandahar province, Afghanistan, December 6, 2025
AN EXCHANGE of fire between Afghan forces and Pakistani troops along the two countries’ tense border killed five Afghan civilians and wounded five others, while three civilians were also wounded on the Pakistani side, officials from the two countries said on Saturday.
Each side has blamed the other for triggering the clash in violation of a fragile two-month ceasefire.
Those killed in the border area near the Afghan city of Spin Boldak, in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, included three children and one woman, said Ali Mohammad Haqmal, the head of information of Spin Boldak District.
Pakistani police and a hospital official in the Pakistani city of Chaman, Mohammad Awais, said that three people, including a woman, were wounded in the shooting and shelling that came from the Afghan side.
The clashes lasted until dawn Saturday, police said.
Tension between the two countries has been high since October when deadly border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants and wounded hundreds on both sides.
The violence erupted after explosions in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on October 9 that the Taliban government blamed on Pakistan and vowed to avenge.
The fighting has been the worst between the neighbours in recent years. A Qatar-mediated ceasefire began in October and has largely held, but peace talks have so far failed to produce an agreement.
Pakistan has suffered several militant attacks inside its country, and has blamed most of them on the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Though separate from the Afghan Taliban, the TTP is closely allied with it, and many of its fighters are believed to have taken refuge in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power there in 2021, further straining relations.
Separately, Pakistan’s military said on Saturday that its security forces had killed nine Pakistani Taliban militants during two intelligence-based operations on Friday in Pakistan’s north-western districts of Tank and Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
