The death toll from Pakistani military air strikes in the eastern Afghanistan provinces of Khost and Kunar has jumped to at least 47, officials said on Sunday, as Islamabad urged Kabul to act against militants launching attacks from Afghan soil.
Border tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have risen since the Taliban seized power last year, with Islamabad claiming militant groups are carrying out regular attacks from the neighbouring country.
The Taliban deny harbouring Pakistani militants, but are also infuriated by a fence Islamabad is erecting along their 2,700-kilometre border.
Tensions between the two neighbours deepened after Saturday's pre-dawn air assault which Afghan officials now claim was carried out by Pakistani military helicopters.
The air strikes hit residential houses in Khost and Kunar along the border, Afghan officials said. Earlier officials had said Pakistani forces had fired rockets.
"Forty-one civilians, mainly women and children, were killed and 22 others were wounded in air strikes by Pakistani forces near the Durand line in Khost province," Shabir Ahmad Osmani, director of information and culture in Khost told AFP.
Najibullah, an official with the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Khost said the death toll in the province was 48.
"Twenty-four people were killed from one family itself," he said.
Jamshid, a tribal leader from Khost, also confirmed that more than 40 people had died.
"I went yesterday with several people to donate blood for treating the wounded in Khost strike," Jamshid said.
Another government official in Khost on condition of anonymity said he saw "42 graves" of people killed, adding that a few people were missing.
"Faces and bodies of some were charred and beyond recognition," Abdul Wahab, a religious scholar from Khost who helped bury some victims said.
Tolo News, Afghanistan's leading private TV channel, continued to show gruesome footage of scattered blood and debris of damaged houses in the assault in Khost. On Saturday, officials had said five children and a woman had been killed in similar strikes in Kunar.
