Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to a ceasefire amid deepening hostilities between the former allies after deadly clashes erupted on the border overnight, according to Pakistani and Afghan officials.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the ceasefire would come into effect at 6pm local time (13:00 GMT) and last for 48 hours. Both countries would make sincere efforts through dialogue to find a solution to the standoff, which was complex yet resolvable, the ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban government’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, wrote in a social media post that the truce was at the “insistence” of the Pakistani side. His social media post did not mention a 48-hour timeframe.
The ceasefire announcement came after renewed fighting killed and wounded dozens in a remote border area spanning southeastern Afghanistan’s Spin Boldak district and Pakistan’s Chaman district overnight on Tuesday.
Both sides accused the other of triggering the clashes.
Amid the tensions on the border, at least five people were killed and 35 others were wounded in explosions in Kabul, said an Italian NGO, EMERGENCY, which runs a hospital in the Afghan capital, before the truce with Pakistan entered into effect.
“We started receiving ambulances filled with wounded people, and we learned that there had been explosions a few kilometres away from our hospital,” Dejan Panic, EMERGENCY’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
“Forty people have arrived so far, including women and children,” he said, adding that “unfortunately, five people were already dead on arrival.”
[Aljazeera]
