Kabul was rocked by two powerful explosions and subsequent automatic gunfire, with multiple witnesses reporting the sound of a fighter jet over the city’s airspace. Top intelligence sources suggest the incident was a targeted aerial strike aimed at Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Noor Wali Mehsud, operating from a TTP and al-Qaeda safehouse in eastern Kabul.
While sources confirm the strike successfully targeted the compound, CNN-News18 accessed a voice message from Noor Wali Mehsud confirming he is safe and in Pakistan, though his son was killed in the attack. The fact that the target was a high-value Pakistani militant suggests a covert, cross-border operation. The timing—occurring within 48 hours of Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif publicly accusing Afghanistan of harbouring terrorists—points strongly to a retaliatory strike, either directly by Pakistan or by a third-party power with Islamabad’s crucial intelligence input and possible ground-level assistance.
This is highly provocative, said sources, indicating Pakistan’s willingness to strike inside Kabul for the first time since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Given the Taliban’s limited air defence capabilities and the absence of the former Afghan Air Force, an attack of this nature—allegedly involving Pakistani-origin jets with external technical assistance—is being viewed by sources close to the Taliban as a blatant violation of Afghan sovereignty.
The incident comes at a time when Afghanistan’s Interim Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi is in India on an eight-day visit, during which he is scheduled to hold separate talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval.
The alleged strike on Mehsud’s family could trigger a major internal crisis within the TTP’s Shura, which is already divided between pro-Kabul and pro-Rawalpindi factions. Security analysts fear that the resulting vacuum and internal clashes could spill over into the border regions of Kunar, Nangarhar, and Paktika, further intensifying the already strained relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban-led Afghan government.