News   /   Pakistan

Afghan militants kill 2 Pakistani soldiers near border

Pakistani soldiers keep vigil from a post on top of a mountain in the Taliban militants' former stronghold border area in Shawal valley on May 20, 2016. (AFP photo)

Militants from Afghanistan have killed two Pakistani soldiers and injured one more in cross-border fire.

Pakistani officials said Sunday that the two were killed after Afghan militants opened fire on Pakistani soldiers stationed northwest of the country near the border with Afghanistan.

A senior security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the shooting took place in Barmal, an area in South Waziristan, which shares borders with Afghanistan's Paktika Province.

Local Pakistani officials and other senior security sources confirmed the attack but there was no official statement from Islamabad. There was also no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Northwestern Pakistan, which includes Waziristan, has been the scene of some large-scale military offensives by the Pakistani military against the suspected hideouts of militants over the past two years. The drive began in the middle of 2014 with the aim of putting an end to the near decade-long militancy that has cost Pakistan thousands of lives.

The army said in May that an intensive three-month operation led to the fall of the last militant stronghold in the area. However, sporadic attacks have continued with the most recent one coming last month when at least 25 people were killed and 30 more wounded in a bomb attack at a mosque in the troubled Mohmand region near the Afghanistan border.

The deadliest of all attacks by militants in recent years came in December 2014 when Pakistan’s Taliban militants, who mostly use the tribal areas in the northwest as a sanctuary, butchered more than 150 people, most of them children, at a school in the city of Peshawar. 


Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Press TV News Roku