Afghan soldiers flee attack, cross border: Pakistani army

The statement said a total of 46 members of the Afghan forces, including five officers, crossed the border late on Sunday.

Dozens of Afghan soldiers slipped across the border into northwestern Pakistan, the Pakistani army said on Monday. The Afghan troops were fleeing after their border post was overrun, apparently by the Taleban.

The statement said a total of 46 members of the Afghan forces, including five officers, crossed the border late on Sunday near the Pakistani border town of Chitral in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Afghan “soldiers have been provided food, shelter and necessary medical care as per established military norms”, the Pakistani army said, adding that it had informed Afghan authorities of the development.

There was no immediate response from Kabul and no information about the fighting on the Afghan side of the border.

The Taleban have swiftly captured territory in recent weeks in Afghanistan, and seized strategic border crossings with several neighbouring countries. They are also threatening a number of provincial capitals — advances that come as the last US and Nato soldiers complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The insurgents are said to now control about half of Afghanistan’s 419 district centres. The rapid fall of districts and the seemingly disheartened response by Afghan government forces have prompted US-allied warlords to resurrect militias with a violent history.

For many Afghans weary of more than four decades of wars and conflict, fears are rising of another brutal civil war as American and Nato troops leave the country.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan — long fraught with suspicion and deep mistrust — deteriorated further when the Taleban overran the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak earlier this month. Taleban fighters at the time were seen receiving medical treatment in a Pakistani hospital in the town of Chaman, across the border from Spin Boldak.

Kabul accused Islamabad of providing sanctuary to the Taleban as Afghan forces battle to retake Spin Boldak. The US last week carried out airstrikes in support of Afghan troops in the southern city of Kandahar, about 100km west of Spin Boldak.

Also this month, Kabul recalled its ambassador and other diplomats from Islamabad after the 26-year-old daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador was brutally attacked in the Pakistani capital. Pakistan still hosts about two million Afghans as refugees from decades of war in their homeland.

• Pakistan