00:00Let's return to Islamabad and speak to Shazeeb Wala, our correspondent there.
00:05Shazeeb, just bring us up to speed with the latest.
00:09Well, the situation remains quite tense and clashes in some parts of the border still continue.
00:15In Pakistan, authorities in the Turkum village, one of the main border crossings in Turkum area,
00:21one of the main border crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan have declared a state of emergency in hospitals
00:27as there are reports of civilian casualties.
00:31At the same time, the Pakistani air force continues to be airborne.
00:35We saw earlier in the morning that Pakistan carried out air strikes in the capital,
00:40in the Afghan capital Kabul and also in Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital,
00:44as well as in the southeastern Afghan province of Pakhtika.
00:50The Pakistani military claims they have only targeted military installations and ammunition dumps in the air strikes.
00:56We were able to talk with a resident in Kabul and she recounted waking up in the early hours of
01:05today morning
01:06to a number of heavy explosions.
01:08She said that she heard gunfire and fighter jets flying over the city for more than an hour
01:13and she explained she was horrified by it.
01:16She also told us that a number of people also took shelters in bunkers.
01:21What we know is that several areas of the capital were targeted in the air strikes by Pakistan,
01:27including the area in the immediate vicinity of the Afghan presidential palace called Darul Aman.
01:32The Pakistani government is calling this operation as Ghaz al-Haq, which means rightous aggression.
01:39What I would like to remind you is that last night's clashes started after the Taliban launched a retaliationary offensive
01:47along the border,
01:48targeting Pakistani border posts in response to Pakistani air strikes in Afghanistan last Sunday.
01:54They opened heavy fire along the border at several checkposts.
01:58It's also worth remembering that both countries share an approximately 2,500 kilometers long border.
02:06We have seen on social media that it has been a real battle of narratives.
02:10Both sides have claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on each other,
02:15something we have not been able to independently verify.
02:18What we do know is that in the early hours of today's morning,
02:22Taliban had announced that they had ended their offensive.
02:26But after the Pakistani air strikes, fighting resumed.
02:29Tensions therefore remain very high.
02:31And according to the security sources in Islamabad,
02:33if the escalation does not stop, air strikes could spread further.
02:38As you were mentioning, they're very much a tit-for-tat situation going on.
02:42And of course, tensions have been boiling over between the two countries for quite some time, haven't they?
02:49Yes, they are.
02:50Tensions have been.
02:51There have been tensions between the two countries for several months now.
02:55The land border between both countries has been closed since the deadly clashes last October.
03:01And the main fear among the local population here in Pakistan is now,
03:06after these big clashes today and yesterday,
03:10is that there can be a development of unconventional warfare.
03:14Many fear the possibility of major terrorist attacks in large cities of Pakistan.
03:20Pakistan security has been put on high alerts in several cities across the country.
03:25On the other hand, we have seen that Pakistan has dwelt a pattern that whenever there is an uptick in
03:31terror attacks in Pakistan,
03:33it carries out strikes inside Afghanistan,
03:35claiming of targeting anti-Pakistan terrorist groups based on Afghan soil.
03:40The bone of contention between the both countries remain cross-border terrorism.
03:45Pakistan, the Pakistani side has asked for assurities from the Afghan side
03:50that its soil will not be used by anti-Pakistan militant groups,
03:53something that the Afghan Taliban government has not been able to make sure.
03:58So there remains a deadlock.
04:00But even though the tensions are very high,
04:02for now, some countries in the region close to both Pakistan and Afghanistan are trying to reduce the tension.
04:08Foreign ministers of a number of Gulf countries have talked with their Pakistani counterpart,
04:14Ishaq Dar, the foreign minister of Pakistan, over the telephone this morning.
04:18And a number of countries, including Iran and Russia, have offered to mediate.
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