'Taliban spokesperson used old images to allege Pakistani airstrikes'

LAHORE: Afghan Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid on 28 June accused Pakistan's military of striking civilian areas in Gayan district of Paktika, Tsamkani district of Paktia, and Manogai district of Kunar, saying the attacks killed and injured dozens of civilians, including women and children.

In a post on X, Mujahid called the strikes a "cowardly act of aggression" and said Afghanistan considered them a crime. He shared images of injured civilians, including children, alongside the post as evidence of the toll.

Fact Check - KP Govt, a verified government-run fact-checking account, has since disputed the images themselves, saying in a post on its X account that the photographs are not from the 28-29 June strikes at all. According to KP Fact Check, reverse image verification traced the photographs to a Facebook page that had published the identical images in April 2022 — more than four years before the strikes they were being used to illustrate. The account described this as a deliberate reuse of outdated imagery to exaggerate the scale of the recent operation.

The strikes and the competing claims

Pakistan carried out the overnight strikes in retaliation for an attack on a Sindh Rangers camp in Karachi two days earlier that killed three paramilitary personnel. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the operation killed 29 militants and came in response to a string of recent attacks inside Pakistan, including strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Deputy Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat separately posted images on social media of children, including an infant, that he said were wounded in the strikes and receiving medical treatment, with Mujahid telling CBS News the figures his deputy cited were accurate.

CBS News reported it could not independently verify either the Pakistani or the Afghan casualty figures — a caveat echoed across international coverage, underlining that the human toll of the 28-29 June operation remains contested and unconfirmed by outside observers.

KP Fact Check's findings

KP Fact Check's post characterised the recycled images as part of a broader pattern, alleging that Afghan Taliban-linked propaganda channels have reused old photographs during previous periods of cross-border tension, in order to shape public perception and cast doubt on Pakistani military operations.

"By reusing old photographs and falsely presenting them as evidence of recent Pakistani airstrikes, Afghan Taliban propaganda channels have attempted to create a misleading narrative and exaggerate the alleged impact of the operation. The deliberate recycling of outdated images is a common disinformation tactic used to fabricate evidence, inflame public sentiment, and lend false credibility to propaganda claims," the post states.

Teh account described the recycling of outdated images as a common disinformation tactic used to fabricate evidence, inflame public sentiment, and lend false credibility to propaganda claims. It characterised the episode as part of a wider pattern, alleging that such campaigns are routinely used by hostile propaganda networks to shape public perception and undermine trust in verified reporting. "Such deceptive information campaigns are routinely employed by hostile propaganda networks to manipulate public perception, spread misinformation, and undermine the credibility of verified reporting," it warned.

Context: a pattern of contested strikes

The 28-29 June strikes are part of a longer-running cycle of cross-border military action and dueling narratives between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban government. An earlier round of Pakistani strikes in early June killed 26 Taliban-linked fighters, according to Islamabad, while Afghan officials said the dead included 13 civilians, most of them children. The United Nations has reported that cross-border fighting killed at least 372 Afghan civilians and injured 397 in the first three months of 2026 alone.

That broader toll is not in dispute between the two sides in the way the authenticity of these specific images is. KP Fact Check's claim is narrower: it concerns the provenance of one set of photographs, not the existence of casualties from the conflict more broadly.

Mujahid's office had not responded to KP Fact Check's claim at the time of publication.