WORLD

Pakistan claims it killed 50 Afghan troops in retaliatory border clash

Pakistani paramilitary soldiers stand guard March 27 while people wait for the opening of the border crossing in Chaman, Pakistan. Pakistan says its forces killed at least 50 Afghan troops and destroyed five checkpoints in clashes along the disputed border two days earlier, while Afghanistan dismissed the account, saying only two border police and a civilian were killed. The two armies traded fire Friday. | AP

Kyodo

May 8, 2017

ISLAMABAD –

A senior military commander said Sunday that Pakistani troops killed as many as 50 Afghan soldiers and destroyed five Afghan check posts during an exchange of fire on the Pakistan-Afghan border at Chaman in Baluchistan last Friday.

Maj. Gen. Nadeem Anjum told reporters in Quetta that the Pakistan army was retaliating against Afghan troops after they attacked census teams in two villages in the Chaman border area.

In Kabul, an Afghan presidential palace spokesman dismissed the Pakistani claim.

"A very false claim by a Pakistani Frontier Corps that as many as 50 Afghan soldiers lost their lives in Pak retaliation; totally rejected," Sediq Sediqqi, the director of information at the presidential palace in Kabul, said in a tweet.