At roughly midnight local time on 9-10 June, the Pakistani Air Force struck residential targets across Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces in eastern Afghanistan. A Khost provincial official told AFP that a house in the Spera district was hit, killing nine people and wounding ten. Two residents of Paktika told AFP that a separate strike killed three people in the Barmal district of that province; one of them said all those killed were children. Taliban chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid placed the combined toll at 13 dead and 14 wounded.

The breakdown is significant. Eleven of the 13 dead were children. One was a woman. One was an elderly man. Mujahid published the figures on X, stating that Pakistan had bombed civilian homes, and described the strikes as a humanitarian crime. Pakistan’s military, the prime minister’s office and the foreign ministry had all declined to comment at the time of writing, a pattern that has held across multiple rounds of strikes since February.

The Dangam district governor in Kunar, Mohammad Omar Sadiq, told IANS that Pakistani forces had destroyed 12 schools in Kunar province since strikes on that province began, and that 80 head of cattle were killed in the overnight attack. The livestock detail is a ground-level indicator of residential colocation: these were not remote forward positions.

Pakistan’s stated position, applied consistently since February, is that strikes inside Afghanistan are directed at TTP infrastructure and militants who conduct attacks on Pakistani soil. It denies deliberately targeting civilians. No statement was issued for the 10 June strikes by the time of publication.

On the afternoon of 9 June, TTP fighters overran a Federal Constabulary post at Hasan Khel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Six paramilitary personnel were killed and several others wounded, according to Pakistan’s Interior Ministry. Security forces killed eight of the attackers and held the checkpoint. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi flew to Peshawar to attend the funeral prayers and told reporters that operations against groups threatening security would be intensified.

Less than 12 hours later, Pakistani aircraft struck homes across three Afghan provinces.

The sequence has repeated throughout this conflict. Pakistan holds the Afghan Taliban government responsible for TTP activity on the grounds that Kabul shelters and enables the group. Kabul denies this, countering that Pakistan harbours hostile actors of its own and has never respected Afghan sovereignty. Neither position has shifted in months of fighting. The Hasan Khel attack on 9 June fed directly into the cycle.

On 12 May 2026, UNAMA published its cross-border civilian casualty update for the first quarter of the year. The figures are stark. Between 1 January and 31 March, 372 Afghan civilians were killed and 397 injured as a direct result of cross-border violence between Pakistani military forces and Afghan security forces. UNAMA attributed responsibility to Pakistani security forces in 94 of the 95 documented incidents. The single incident attributed to Afghan forces involved indirect fire. The quarterly figure is the highest the mission has recorded since 2011.

More than half of the quarter’s dead are attributable to one event. On 16 March, Pakistani aircraft struck the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Hospital in Kabul, a facility operating on the grounds of the former NATO base Camp Phoenix. UNAMA independently verified at least 269 killed and 122 wounded. The hospital admitted only male patients; this explains the high proportion of men in the overall Q1 casualty count. Pakistan told UNAMA in writing that the 16 March strikes were directed at alleged drone stockpiles and ammunition depots used by the Taliban, and that no hospital was deliberately targeted. The Taliban put the death toll above 400.

The UNAMA report was published 29 days ago. Since then, the pattern has continued. The 10 June strikes bring further civilian deaths in the same provinces that have been struck repeatedly since February.

In the months following the February escalation, China hosted peace talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Urumqi. Beijing subsequently announced that both sides had agreed not to escalate the conflict and to explore a path toward a durable settlement. Pakistani authorities have since acknowledged that China and unnamed friendly countries remain engaged in encouraging a settlement. No timeline or mechanism for that engagement has been made public.

The operational record since Urumqi has not matched the diplomatic messaging. Pakistani strikes on Afghan territory have continued at intervals. The border, closed to bilateral trade since October 2025, remains shut, stranding thousands of people and severing commerce in both directions. Afghanistan says the Pakistan-Afghanistan border closure was still in effect as of 10 June.

Security analyst Masood Khan, speaking to AP, said Islamabad’s central objective remains enforcing a decree by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada that ordered the TTP to stop attacks on Pakistan. Khan said that decree must be implemented sincerely and faithfully for the tension to ease. Kabul’s position is that the TTP is not under its command and that Pakistani strikes on Afghan villages do not constitute a legitimate counter-terrorism operation. The gap between those two positions has not closed since February.

Kabul has previously responded to Pakistani strikes by attacking Pakistani border posts. The situation along the frontier was described as calm in the hours following the 10 June strikes, but that calm has preceded prior retaliatory cycles.