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One dead, over a dozen injured in fresh clashes at Afghan-Pakistani border

Fresh fighting comes less than a week after cross-border shelling and gunfire killed eight Pakistani civilians and one Afghan soldier near the same Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing.

AP

A man injured by the Afghan forces shelling is brought to hospital for treatment in Chaman, southwestern Pakistan along the Afghan border.

One person has been reported killed and over a dozen others injured after fresh clashes erupted between the border forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Pakistani officials, the latest clashes took place on Thursday near the key Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing.

"One civilian has been killed and 12 others, including women and children, were injured," a local official of the Pakistani border area of Chaman told Reuters news agency, adding that clashes were still ongoing.

Thursday's fighting started when Pakistani forces repairing a portion of the border fence, which was damaged during an earlier clash on Sunday, came under attack from the Afghan side of the frontier, according to Zahid Saleem, chief secretary in Balochistan.

Saleem also said Afghan mortar shells had landed in civilian settlements on the Pakistani side.

The police spokesman of the Afghan province of Kandahar did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on the latest fighting or the casualties.

On Sunday, cross-border shelling and gunfire killed eight Pakistani civilians and one Afghan soldier near the same crossing, which connects Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan with the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.

Both sides blamed each other for instigating Sunday's clashes.

Tensions rise on Afghanistan-Pakistan border as Pakistan blames Afghan border guards of firing rockets into its border and kill at least 6 civilians pic.twitter.com/FRohVbtA4C
— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) December 11, 2022

Key trade route

Afghanistan's ministry of defence, run by the Taliban administration, said in a post on Twitter that Pakistani forces had opened fire first on Sunday, and called for a resolution of the issue through negotiations.

"Negative actions and creating excuses for war will benefit no one," the ministry said.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have for decades had territorial disputes at their border and the Chaman crossing was closed for several days after similar clashes last month.

Chaman-Spin Boldak is the second busiest crossing between the two countries and a key trade route through which large quantities of critical goods move in and out of landlocked Afghanistan.

SOURCE: Reuters