Explosion Heard as Thick Smoke Rises Over Kabul
Kabul residents reported hearing an explosion on Monday, followed by a fire and thick smoke rising over the capital. The cause and nature of the blast remain unknown.
Kabul residents reported hearing an explosion on Monday, followed by a fire and thick smoke rising over the capital. The cause and nature of the blast remain unknown.
Images received show a column of dense smoke.
Taliban officials have not yet commented on the incident.
Many Kabul residents said the explosion and fire occurred in the Parwan-e-Seh area, within the capital’s fourth police district.
This is a developing story.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has issued new instructions to provincial authorities and security agencies to detain undocumented Afghan nationals. Under the directive, Afghans without valid visas will be arrested immediately from 10 July.
According to Dawn newspaper, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said Afghan nationals residing in the country without valid visas will face immediate arrest from July 10.
The ministry has circulated the directive to provincial authorities and security agencies, calling for the strict and coordinated implementation of its plan to deport undocumented migrants.
Under the instructions, provincial governors, local administrations, police and other law enforcement agencies have been ordered to ensure the effective and uniform enforcement of the policy.
Security agencies have also been instructed to submit daily reports to the Interior Ministry detailing the number of Afghan nationals without valid visas, the actions taken against them and their current status. The directive states that the matter must be treated as a top priority and implemented in full.
Large numbers of Afghans fled to Pakistan after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Pakistan’s deportation campaign, first launched in 2023, resumed in April last year after the government revoked the residence permits of hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals and warned they would face arrest if they failed to leave the country.
According to figures presented to the Standing Committee of Pakistan’s Senate, the country deported more than 1.15 million Afghan nationals last year alone.
The developments come amid escalating border tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban, which have increasingly developed into open confrontation in recent months.
Sources in Herat told Afghanistan International that Mohammad Hussain, the former police commander of Shahrak district in Ghor province, was killed in an attack on Airport Road in Herat. According to the sources, unidentified gunmen carried out the shooting.
According to information received, the attack took place on Sunday evening, and the former commander’s wife was also injured.
Sources said Mohammad Hussain was travelling with his family when unidentified armed men opened fire.
Following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Mohammad Hussain had been living in Herat. He was previously one of the prominent commanders under Mohammad Ibrahim Malekzada, the former governor of Ghor during the previous Afghan government.
In the final months before the collapse of the former government, he also served as commander of the public uprising forces in Shahrak district of Ghor.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Afghanistan International that at least 36 civilians were killed and 163 others injured in recent Pakistani attacks on three Afghan provinces. He said the casualties included women and children.
According to Mujahid, Pakistani military aircraft struck residential areas in three eastern and south-eastern provinces, destroying at least three homes.
He said the deadliest attack took place in Chamkani district of Paktia province. According to the Taliban spokesman, an elderly man and a child were killed in the initial strike. When local residents gathered to rescue survivors, the area was bombed a second time, killing another 28 villagers and injuring 158 others.
Mujahid said another strike in Giyan district of Paktika province hit the home of a civilian, killing six people, most of them women and children.
He added that a house in Mano Gai district of Kunar province was completely destroyed, causing heavy property damage but no casualties.
Karzai Urges Pakistan to End Confrontational Policies
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai condemned the Pakistani military strikes on Paktia, Paktika and Kunar.
In a statement posted on social media, Karzai urged Pakistan to abandon what he described as its confrontational policies and double standards towards extremism and instead engage with Afghanistan on the basis of good neighbourly relations and civilised conduct.
Pakistan Confirms the Strikes
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information had earlier said that following recent militant attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, Pakistani security forces carried out a ground operation along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and struck what it described as border positions inside Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X on Sunday that one senior commander of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and three members of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the TTP, were killed during an operation in Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Tarar also said that, as part of Operation Ghazab-Lil-Haq, Pakistani security forces targeted hideouts and camps belonging to Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and the TTP in Afghanistan’s border regions.
According to him, three locations in Paktia, Paktika and Kunar provinces were struck, killing at least 25 militants.
The minister reiterated that Pakistan’s campaign against terrorism would continue “at full pace to wipe out the menace of foreign sponsored and supported terrorism from the country.”
Pakistan has repeatedly accused the TTP and affiliated groups of using Afghan territory as a safe haven to organise attacks inside Pakistan.
Earlier this month, Pakistan also carried out deadly airstrikes which, according to the Taliban administration, killed 13 people. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also confirmed that 13 civilians were killed and 10 others injured in those strikes.
At the time, Pakistan’s Information Minister dismissed the Taliban’s claims that 13 civilians had been killed as propaganda, saying the operations were intelligence-based and carried out in response to recent deadly attacks against Pakistani forces in the tribal areas.
The latest Pakistani strikes come shortly after Taliban Defence Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid said, following his return from Moscow, that Pakistan would soon “no longer dare” to attack Afghan territory.
Several rounds of talks between the Taliban and Pakistan, mediated by countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Türkiye and China, have so far failed to produce an agreement or ease tensions.
A Taliban spokesman told Afghanistan International that the group is following the case of Sediqa, a 17-year-old girl imprisoned in Badghis. According to her family, she has been in prison for two years after refusing a forced marriage to an elderly man.
Qurban Gul, Sediqa’s mother, said in a video that her daughter is ill in prison and appealed to the Taliban to release her immediately.
She also sent documents to Afghanistan International, saying she had exhausted every possible effort to secure her daughter’s release without success.
Responding to the mother's appeal on Saturday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said he would follow up on her petition.
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, anyone under the age of 18 is considered a child. Sediqa’s family says she was imprisoned while still a minor and has not yet reached the age of 18.
Two years of Sediqa’s life have been spent behind prison walls and in Taliban courtrooms. She was still a child when her ordeal began with an alleged forced marriage, and today she remains behind bars. Despite everything she has endured, she says: “Even if I die, I will never accept this marriage.”
Sediqa is an ethnic Turkmen from the predominantly Turkmen village of Murichaq in Bala Murghab district of Badghis province.
Afghanistan International has obtained dozens of documents related to her case, indicating that it involves a complex legal process, pressure from an influential man and the determination of a young woman who has resisted a forced marriage from childhood into adulthood and now remains imprisoned because of it.
Shahabuddin Delawar, a member of the Taliban’s Doha negotiating team, said US officials sought to retain a military base in Afghanistan during the Doha talks.
He also claimed former US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad warned Afghanistan could become “another Syria” after the US withdrawal.
Speaking at a meeting in Kabul on Saturday, Delawar said Khalilzad argued that figures such as General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad Noor had been kept under US influence and that the situation would spiral out of control once American forces withdrew. He added that Khalilzad had also warned Afghanistan could move towards fragmentation.
Delawar said the Taliban took control of the situation after the US withdrawal and had continued to honour their commitments under the Doha Agreement.
Taliban Reject Claims of Secret Doha Annexes
The senior Taliban official also rejected claims that the Doha Agreement contained secret annexes.
His remarks come after Khalilzad previously acknowledged that annexes existed, although he did not disclose their contents.
Delawar said the annexes referred only to arrangements ensuring that US forces would not be targeted while moving between different Afghan provinces.
He added that following the signing of the Doha Agreement, the Taliban carried out no attacks against US forces in Afghanistan and that no American soldiers were killed.
Although Taliban attacks on foreign forces ceased after the Doha Agreement was signed in 2020, fighting between the group and the former Afghan government's security forces intensified significantly, with numerous reports documenting heavy casualties among Afghan defence and security personnel.
Delawar's remarks come as US President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of the United States returning to Bagram Air Base in public speeches.
