Shehbaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, denounced the Afghan Border Forces’ “unprovoked shelling” of civilians in Pakistan’s Chaman district and called on the caretaker Afghan administration to ensure that such episodes “not repeated again.”
According to the Pakistani military’s media affairs division, Chaman was subjected to “unprovoked and indiscriminate” heavy gunfire and artillery shelling on Sunday, December 11, that resulted in at least seven deaths and 16 wounded.
The Pakistani premier, in response to the incident of Sunday in Chaman, wrote on his Twitter handle that the “unprovoked shelling & fire by Afghan Border Forces at Chaman resulting in [the] martyrdom of several Pakistani citizens & injuring more than a dozen is unfortunate & deserves the strongest condemnation.”
The Special Representative of Pakistan for Afghanistan also denounced the incident in which Afghan forces reportedly opened fire on civilians in Chaman. Mohammad Sadiq Khan urged the Afghan government to prevent such incidents and to take the “strictest possible actions” against those responsible.
Mansoor Ahmad Khan, the former ambassador of Pakistan to Afghanistan, also condemned the incidents and emphasized the need for preventative measures. “Continuation of such cross border incidents not only affects relations but [also] impedes enhancing of cooperation in political, trade, transit, economic exchanges and particularly movement of people,” he wrote on Twitter.
The armed battle between Afghan and Pakistani border forces at the Friendship Gate of Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan on Sunday sparked the responses of top Pakistani authorities. The border crossing was briefly shut down but is reopened to cars and pedestrians.
