Click to expand Image Residents walk through the rubble from Pakistani airstrikes that killed civilians in the village of Mandokhail, Chamkani district, Afghanistan, June 29, 2026. © 2026 Saifullah Zahir/AP Photo 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 evidence that the Omid Center was being used for military purposes, making the attack unlawfully indiscriminate.In addition, mortar attacks and shelling by Pakistan forces have led to the closure of 19 health facilities, where an already grave humanitarian situation was made worse because of Pakistan’s forced return of Afghan refugees to the area.International humanitarian law requires warring parties to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm. Attacking forces must at all times distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and combatants and military objectives on the other, and only target the latter. Defending forces must, to the extent feasible, protect civilians under their control from the effects of attack, including by avoiding locating military objectives near densely populated areas. However, violations by one side do not relieve the other of its own obligations.