ISLAMABAD, Oct 12 — Pakistan closed border crossings with Afghanistan on Sunday, Pakistani officials said, following exchanges of fire between the forces of the two countries.
Afghan troops opened fire on Pakistani border posts late Saturday, with the country's Defence Ministry saying this was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan earlier in the week.
Pakistan said it had responded with gun and artillery fire. Pakistani security officials said that a number of Afghan border posts were destroyed in retaliatory attacks.
The exchange of fire was mostly over on Sunday morning, Pakistani security officials said. But in Pakistan's Kurram area, intermittent gunfire continued, according to local officials and residents.
Pakistan's two main border crossings with Afghanistan, at Torkham and Chaman, as well as at least three minor crossings at Kharlachi, Angoor Adda and Ghulam Khan were closed on Sunday, local officials said.
There was no immediate comment from Kabul on the closing. Afghanistan's Defence Ministry had previously said their operation had finished at midnight local time.
"There is no kind of threat in any part of Afghanistan's territory," the Taliban administration's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Sunday.
Landlocked Afghanistan has a 2,600km-long border with Pakistan. Islamabad accuses the Taliban administration of harbouring militants who attack Pakistan, a charge that Kabul denies.
The Pakistani airstrikes, not officially acknowledged by Islamabad, had targeted the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group in Kabul on Thursday, according to a Pakistani security official. It is unclear if he survived.
The TTP has been fighting to overthrow the Islamabad government and replace it with a strict Islamic-led system of governance. It has had a close relationship with the Afghan Taliban.
