Residents walk through the rubble from Pakistani airstrikes that killed civilians in the village of Mandokhail, Chamkani district, Afghanistan, June 29, 2026.
On June 29, Pakistani airstrikes in three provinces in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 28 civilians and wounded at least 49, including among them women and children, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Pakistani authorities assert that they were targeting militants responsible for attacking Pakistani security personnel days earlier in Karachi but provided no detail about the strike.
UNAMA has reported that in the first three months of 2026, cross-border attacks by Pakistani forces have killed and injured over 750 Afghan civilians, most from airstrikes in eastern and southern Afghanistan. Pakistan has alleged that a Pakistani militant group operating from Afghan territory has carried out attacks inside Pakistan, some of which have also killed and injured civilians.
Civilian casualties alone are not conclusive evidence of laws-of-war violations, but reports of civilian deaths heighten the need for impartial investigations of possible war crimes by either attacking or defending forces.
Previously, UNAMA reported that airstrikes in Asadabad city and elsewhere in Afghanistan’s Kunar province on April 27 killed 7 civilians and wounded 79, including 13 women and 39 children. One resident told Human Rights Watch: “My daughter, Nila, who is 4 years old, was injured—she has lost her fingers. My brother, Ahmad, who was 11, was killed. I have lost my home, and my daughter has a permanent disability. This is the new reality of our life now.”
A March 16 airstrike by Pakistani forces on the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Center in Kabul killed at least 269 civilians and injured more than 122, most of them patients. Human Rights Watch investigated the incident and found no evid
