Bismillah Khan returned early this month to his home village in the border province of Paktia in Afghanistan with a single dream: to spend the rest of his life in peace in the house he had built with money earned over 12 years of hard work in the Gulf.
The man, in his fifties, had spent every taka earned abroad on a two-storey house for his children and grandchildren. But that dream was shattered within minutes. Before dawn on Monday (29 June), he was woken by a series of powerful explosions across the village of Mandikhil in Chamkani district, and in moments everything changed.
Afghanistan says Pakistan carried out airstrikes overnight on the border provinces of Paktika, Paktia and Kunar. Bismillah Khan’s home was among the many civilian houses damaged in the strikes.
According to the Afghan government, the strikes killed at least 36 civilians and wounded 163 more, most of them women and children. Pakistan, however, says its forces carried out “precise” operations on the hideouts of armed groups in three Afghan provinces, and that 29 fighters were killed in the air and ground operations.
Standing amid the rubble of stone and mud that was his home only a short while earlier, Bismillah Khan said he still could not grasp how everything had ended in an instant. His voice breaking, he said only women and children had been inside the house; his wife and daughter were killed in the strike, and about 10 other family members were injured. “I don’t know why our house was targeted,” he said.
Local residents said that, a few hours after the first strike, Pakistani forces struck again as rescue work was under way. As people desperately tried to pull those trapped under the rubble to safety and arrange to send the wounded to hospital, a second round of missiles hit.
Describing the second strike, resident Marzia Khan Wali said: “We were searching for the women and children trapped under the rubble. As we were lifting the injured into vehicles to take them to hospital, we heard the warplanes again. Within seconds, the very people trying to save lives were hit.”
In the neighbouring province of Paktika, Zarmina, a mother of five from the village of Gilan, sat beside the ruins of her destroyed home. She lost her husband and youngest daughter in the strike. Clutching a blanket recovered from the wreckage, she said: “We were asleep when the bombs fell. There was no warning of any kind. I opened my eyes and saw that everything was gone.” She added: “We know nothing about politics or armed groups. We just farm to make a living.”
In Kunar province, dozens of families in border villages have fled their homes fearing fresh strikes. Local elders said many residents were now spending the night in open fields instead of their homes, or taking shelter further from the border. “People here are living with two fears — one, the fear of war, and the other, the fear of losing their homes,” said Mera Khan, a local tribal elder.
The latest airstrikes come amid rising tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistan has carried out cross-border strikes several times. Islamabad accuses members of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) of using Afghan soil as a safe haven to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Such attacks have risen markedly in recent years, with the country’s security forces and military installations repeatedly targeted, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces.
Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said in a social-media post that the country’s counter-terrorism operations would continue “at full pace” until the threat of foreign-backed and foreign-supported terrorism was completely eliminated. The Taliban-led Afghan government, for its part, strongly condemned the latest airstrikes, calling them a “clear violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty” and an “attack on innocent civilians.” It said it remained committed to the pledges of the Doha agreement signed between the United States and the Afghan Taliban in February 2020, under which Afghan territory would not be allowed to be used for attacks against any other country.
Standing in the rubble in Paktia, Bismillah Khan is now searching only for a safe shelter for his surviving family members. “I left my country for many years in search of a better future,” he said. After a brief silence, he added: “I came home hoping to live in peace. But war reached my doorstep before I did.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report