Children were playing outside in the village of Hijratabad when the rockets came.
It was just before noon on March 2. Some families had only returned that morning to their homes in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar provinceafter spending the previous night in a nearby village, hoping the fighting along the border had calmed.
Then they heard the jets.
“A rocket hit outside our home,” Rahimullah, 58, tells Zan Times in a phone interview. Two of his sons were seriously injured, with his nine-year-old losing both his legs in the attack.
The boys were rushed to a nearby clinic that lacked the equipment needed to treat them. As they tried to transfer them to the district hospital, rockets were still falling. “We took refuge at the bottom of a hill and waited there until the firing stopped,” Rahimullah says.
At the hospital, doctors told him that his 12-year-old son, Jawad, had died. “They put him in white clothes and told me to bury him there,” he recalled. “I said, ‘No, I have to take him back so my wife and his sisters can see him for the last time.’” At least three children were killed and nine wounded, including Jawad and his brother.
That attack in Hijratabad, which is in the Khas district of Kunar province, was part of escalating cross-border hostilities between Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan. TheUnited Nations has recorded at least 56 civilian deaths, including 24 children and six women.
Humanitarian agencies say the escalation has already triggered large-scale displacement across eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, particularly in provinces along the border. The International Medical Corps estimates that more than 114,000 people have been newly displaced in recent weeks as fighting and airstrikes spread across provinces including Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia and Paktika.
For many of these communities, the violence comes on top of earlier crises. Thousands of families in eastern Afghanistan were still displaced by a powerful earthquake that struck the region in 2025, leaving them particularly vulnerable to renewed conflict.
Villagers say the poorest communities are now bearing the brunt of the escalation.
Rahimullah’s family held a brief burial for Jawad with only a few relatives present before fleeing to the relative safety of the neighbouring district of Mazar Dara.
For many of the 100 families in Hijratabad, the bombardment turned an ordinary morning into catastrophe. “That morning was like the Day of Judgment for us,” says Ansarullah, 37, who also lost his young son in the same attack. “I was not at home when the rockets hit. My brothers had taken my son to the hospital and called me. I went straight to the hospital.” When doctors told him the boy had died, he fainted. “It was a very painful moment and my heart could not bear it.”
Almost all residents have now fled the village, Ansarullah tells Zan Times. Only some elders, mothers, and fathers stayed behind to guard homes and livestock. Several residents explain that some families are too poor to leave their houses unattended.
Another child killed in the rocket attack was 12-year-old Moawya. In a phone interview, his uncle explains what happened: “During the night, half of our family –12 women and three men – moved to the Nurgal district by zarang (a three-wheeled vehicle), and five remained behind. The next morning, I sent my Moawya and three others away so that their life would be safe, but he returned home later without permission. He was a fourth-grade student. Truly, I cannot describe how difficult that moment was,” his uncle said in a phone interview. “We quickly carried out the funeral ceremony. People were all afraid, and we did not inform many others. There was a possibility of another attack at any moment. We stayed in the house until evening, and people came to offer condolences. After that, our family moved to Nangarhar.”
In Nangarhar, the extended family now lives in cramped conditions as five brothers with their families share a single house with their parents.
“The condition of the rooms is such that they only barely provide shelter over our heads and have no other facilities,” says the uncle, who asks not to be identified. “During the day water only comes for one hour. For electricity we have solar panels and batteries, but they have also stopped working.”
Further south in Paktia province, residents describe a similar pattern of displacement and destruction. In Jak-Oregori village in Samkani district, Khair Gul says mortars struck their home as the family prepared the evening meal during Ramadan. “Children were playing under the trees and the women were cooking for iftar when mortars came from the Pakistani side and hit our house,” he recounts to Zan Times. “My father was killed and three other members of our family were wounded.”
Because shelling continued through the night, the family buried him quietly the next morning and fled into the surrounding mountains. “Everyone has gone up into the mountains because it feels safer,” Khair Gul says. “But there is no place to rest there and the weather is cold.”
Across the region, people who were already struggling with poverty now describe fleeing bombardment with little more than blankets, leaving behind homes and livestock that sustained them.
Shortly after midnight on March 6, Mirza Jan, a 60-year-old father of six, said a mortar shell struck his house in Umar village in Paktia’s Dand Patan district. “When we woke up everyone was terrified and trying to hide. Dust was rising from the walls and the rooms had collapsed,” he explains. Once he realised that everyone in his family was alive, he told them to leave immediately. With no car or transport, the family fled into nearby agricultural fields. “We took blankets with us and spent the night there,” he said. “The situation of the people is such that many do not even have money for transportation and are forced to remain in their homes.”
Haji Afsar Jan, 62, reluctantly left his home with 17 relatives after shells struck his village, also located in Dand Patan. “There was no vehicle. We moved at night because during the day no one could even stand upright due to the danger.” Only two family members remained to protect their belongings.
“Our house was full of everything we needed for life, but because of the war we left it all behind,” he tells Zan Times. “A great deal of harm has come to the people of Patan because our area is very close to the fighting. Mortars and artillery shells land there, and sometimes even Kalashnikov bullets reach the area because we are so close.”
Those who stayed behind in their villages speak of growing fear and desperation. “Day and night there is shelling. At night we move out, some go to the mountains and others to the foothills,” says Hashim, who is guarding his home in Dand Patan. “There is no safe place. Some people sleep in the mountains and others in mountain passes. They travel on foot or by tractor. There is no food or medicine.”
He says at least one resident in their neighbourhood had been killed: “We dug the grave during the night and in the morning we held the funeral prayers.”
Despite repeated attempts, Zan Times was unable to interview women affected by the fighting. Journalists working on the ground said it was too dangerous as the Taliban have banned interviews with women.
At least three journalists also state that the Taliban had prohibited reporters from photographing or reporting directly from areas affected by fighting between Taliban forces and Pakistani security.
While the Taliban have publicised their own military operations targeting Pakistani positions and claimed heavy losses on the Pakistani side, residents say the suffering of civilians along the border has received little attention.
For parents in Hijratabad village, the consequences of the fighting will be measured not only in destroyed homes but in the children who did not survive the rockets that day. While forces on both sides claim victory, residents say it is civilians who are left to bury their dead and rebuild what little they have left.
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writers. Hajar Sadat and Nematullah Danesh are the pseudonyms of journalists in Afghanistan. Freshta Ghani contributed reporting.
