Rockets from Pakistan kill Afghan woman, 3 children
KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Rockets fired from Pakistan hit a village in eastern Afghanistan killing a woman and three children, Afghan officials said on Sunday, one of three cross-border attacks around the same time overnight.
Tension has mounted between the neighbors, with Pakistan saying 11 of its soldiers were killed in an airstrike by U.S. forces operating from Afghanistan on June 10. Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened five days later to send troops across the frontier to hunt down Taliban militants based in Pakistan.
Rockets launched from about 300 meters (yards) inside Pakistani territory landed in a village near the eastern town of Khost on Saturday, close to a large NATO base, killing a woman and three children, provincial governor Arsala Jamal said. Eight people were wounded in the attack, most of them women.
"It was late evening. I was praying in the mosque when suddenly the sound of explosions started," said Aziz Khan, a driver who lives in the village. "I stopped my prayers and rushed outside ... I saw one of the rockets had hit my house.
"Inside I found three of my children dead. My wife and two sons were wounded. My wife had prepared food and gathered the kids to feed them when the rocket hit about 10 meters (yards) away from them. My brother's children and his wife were also there. Four of his kids and his wife were also wounded."
At around the same time on Saturday evening, a rocket fired from Pakistan hit a hospital in northeastern Kunar province, killing one man and wounding two others, the provincial governor said.
Also at the same time, three artillery shells fired from Pakistan landed in an Afghan army camp and three more close to a NATO base in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika, the alliance said. There were no casualties, but NATO forces returned fire.
Pakistan's military denied firing artillery into Paktika and said the rounds could have been fired by militants. A spokesman said he had no knowledge of any incident in Khost or Kunar.
A total of 27 rockets were fired from Pakistan to the Afghan provinces of Paktika and Khost, the Afghan Defence Ministry said.
"The Ministry of Defence condemns this act and asks the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at the first instance to prevent such attacks on the defenceless Afghan people from Pakistani soil," ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zaher Azimi said.
Afghan troops responded by firing 19 artillery rounds from Khost and nine rounds from Paktika which landed in Pakistan.
PAKISTANI DENIAL
Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said international forces and militants exchanged fire on the Afghan side of the border and Pakistani forces also fired at the militants on the frontier in the North Waziristan region.
"No it's not possible. It was not from our fire, it could have been the militants' fire but not from our positions," Abbas said when asked about the NATO report of shells landing close to one of its forward bases and inside an Afghan army compound.
"We openly engaged the militants on the border, who the Afghan forces were also engaging. There is no possibility of our engaging the camps of the Afghan forces inside Afghanistan."
Though Afghanistan and Pakistan are both U.S. allies, their poorly defined border is a major source of distrust.
Afghan and NATO forces battling the Taliban say the militants are able to train and launch attacks into Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistan's lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal belt.
Pakistan acknowledges the Taliban might get some help from militant allies in Pakistan but says it is doing all it can to stop the movement of militants across the border.
(Additional reporting by Robert Birsel in Islamabad and Jonathon Burch in Kabul; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Catherine Evans)
