Sources told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that Pakistani drone strikes in Kabul late on October 9 killed two senior members of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban. The reported operation marked an unusually direct strike inside the Afghan capital and came at a moment when relations between the neighbors were already under severe strain.
A Pakistani security official and a member of the TTP said the target was Noor Wali Mehsud, the group’s leader. It was not clear from the reporting whether Mehsud was killed. A TTP source said Mehsud was alive but that two “important” members of the group had been killed. The article did not name them, and that uncertainty is important because the available evidence supports the casualties but not a final identification.
The same report said suspected Pakistani airstrikes hit the eastern Afghan province of Paktika early on October 10. Witnesses described a market selling second-hand weapons, a shop selling computers and a restaurant being struck. No casualties were reported there. The Taliban’s Defense Ministry condemned the attacks and said Pakistan had violated Kabul’s sovereign territory.
Pakistan’s military spokesman did not directly answer when asked whether Islamabad was behind the strikes. Instead, General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a televised press conference that Pakistan would take whatever measures were needed to safeguard Pakistani lives and property. That guarded response left the strikes officially unattributed in the public record even as multiple sources described them as Pakistani attacks.
The attack also underscored the difficulty of verifying cross-border strikes in real time. Pakistani officials did not acknowledge responsibility, Taliban authorities condemned a sovereignty breach, and TTP figures offered only partial confirmation of their losses. That combination of reported strikes, guarded official language and competing claims is typical of the Pakistan-Afghanistan security relationship, but the scale of the Kabul strike made this episode more dangerous than a routine border clash. It also raised the risk that each side would answer reported force with public denials, which can harden positions without reducing the violence.
The timing added to the significance. The reported raids came two days after the TTP killed 11 Pakistani security personnel, including a lieutenant colonel and a major, in northwestern Pakistan. That attack underlined the cycle of violence that has driven the standoff between Islamabad and the TTP for years. The group has waged a long insurgency against the Pakistani state, while Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of giving the militants shelter.
The same day, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in New Delhi for a week of talks, the highest-level Taliban visit to India since the group returned to power in 2021. India also announced it was upgrading its mission in Kabul to a full embassy. The visit was not part of the strike report itself, but it showed how the wider regional picture was shifting at the same time as the border crisis deepened.
For now, the most verified fact is narrower than the headline suggested by rumor and repetition: multiple sources said two senior TTP members were killed in a Pakistani drone strike in Kabul, but the identity of the target and the fate of Noor Wali Mehsud remained uncertain.
