Info ministry refutes Afghan Taliban's claim of strikes in border areas

The information ministry on Friday refuted Afghanistan’s claims of targeting alleged terrorist camps in the border areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. In a statement on its fact check account, the ministry said, “The Afghan Taliban regime, through their various propaganda mouthpieces and official statements, is claiming to have targeted some alleged ISKP camps in border areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan using rudimentary drones. “The claims are false as usual,” it declared. The ministry added that terrorist camps, including “those of Daesh and more than two dozen other terrorist organisations are factually located, run and patronised from inside the territories under control of [the] Afghan Taliban regime”. According to the statement, one rudimentary drone of the Taliban regime intruded into Pakistan’s airspace near Shinko, Khyber and was “immediately identified and neutralised by the alert air defence system of the Pakistan Air Force”. The ministry also shared a picture of the aforementioned drone. It asserted that the Taliban regime was “used to [issuing] such fake and nefarious statements” to cover their “patronisation of terror waged in neighbouring countries and region, including that from Daesh, Fitna Al Khawarij, Fitna Al Hindustan and others”. The Pakistani government uses the term ‘Fitna al-Khawarij’ to refer to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its affiliates. It uses the term ‘Fitna al-Hindustan’ to refer to groups it accuses of being sponsored by India to execute terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. Earlier in the day, the Afghan Taliban had claimed to have launched “air strikes” on what it described as “terrorist hideouts” in KP and Balochistan, both of which share a border with Afghanistan. More to follow