The exchange of fire was mostly over on Sunday morning, Pakistani security officials said. But in Pakistan’s Kurram area, intermittent gunfire continued, according to local officials and residents.

Afghanistan’s ministry of defence had previously said that their operation had finished at midnight local time.

Kabul said on Sunday that it had halted attacks at the request of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The two Arab Gulf nations had released statements of concern about the clashes.

“There is no kind of threat in any part of Afghanistan’s territory,” the Taliban administration’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Sunday. “The Islamic Emirate and the people of Afghanistan will defend their land and remain resolute and committed in this defence.”

Mujahid said that fighting was ongoing in some areas.

Islamabad accuses the Taliban administration of harbouring militants who attack Pakistan, a charge that Kabul denies.

BORDER CLOSURE

Pakistan’s two main border crossings with Afghanistan, at Torkham and Chaman, were closed on Sunday, local officials said. At least three minor crossings, at Kharlachi, Angoor Adda and Ghulam Khan, were also closed, local officials said.

There was no immediate comment from Kabul on the closing of the border. Landlocked Afghanistan has a 2,600 kilometre-long border with Pakistan.

The Pakistani airstrikes, not officially acknowledged by Islamabad, had targeted the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group in Kabul on Thursday, according to a Pakistani security official. It is unclear if he survived.

The TTP has been fighting to overthrow the Islamabad government and replace it with a strict Islamic-led system of governance. Mujahid on Sunday denied that TTP fighters were allowed to operate from Afghan soil.