Khost: Rockets fired from Pakistan hit a residential area in eastern Afghanistan killing four civilians, Afghan officials said on Sunday, one of three cross-border attacks around the same time overnight.

Tension has mounted between the neighbours, with Pakistan saying 11 of its soldiers were killed in an airstrike by US forces operating from Afghanistan on June 10. Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened five days later to send troops across the frontier to hunt down Taliban militants based in Pakistan.

In the latest attack, a woman and three children were killed when rockets launched from about 300 metres yards inside Pakistani territory landed in the eastern town of Khost, the provincial governor Arsala Jamal said. Eight people were wounded in the attack, most of them women.


At around the same time on Saturday evening, a rocket fired from Pakistan hit a hospital in the northeastern Afghan province of Kunar, killing a man and wounding another man and a woman, the provincial governor said.

Also at the same time, three artillery shells fired from Pakistan landed in an Afghan army camp and three more landed close to a Nato base in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika, the alliance said. There were no casualties, but Nato forces returned fire.