Pakistan says it's killed almost 300 Afghan Taliban

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Sam Peranti and for the past seven years I've been granted access to a team of US special agents. Their job? To track down those who create and trade in sickening images on the dark web. When I hug my kids, that's your fuel. That's your why. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web tells their story. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

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1:07This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and at 16 hours GMT on Friday the 27th of February, these are our main stories. Pakistan says it's killed almost 300 Taliban officials and militants in Afghanistan as the conflict between the South Asian neighbours escalates. Another purge at the top of China's military as President Xi punishes any sign of perceived disloyalty. Also in this podcast, people in Gaza mark Ramadan under a shaky ceasefire after two years of war. Before the war, God be praised. We were very well off. Now, God be praised that we are alive. And we'll hear from Cuba about the consequences of the US oil blockade.

2:02Let's start the podcast in South Asia and the sharp escalation in hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is causing alarm across the region.

2:18That's the sound of the emergency services responding to a series of explosions in the Afghan capital Kabul overnight on Thursday. Pakistani warplanes also bombed the city of Kandahar, another stronghold of the country's Taliban government. These people in Kabul described their experience.

2:40We were all asleep when the plane came in very low As soon as I heard the sound of the aircraft I got up I saw the plane descend and drop two bombs Then it went back up again It was around 2am All of us, including the women, ran downstairs By the grace of God, we didn't suffer any loss of life But the doors were broken And the windows of the house were shattered Many people were injured by broken glass and until late at night people were being treated at the same clinic. It was a very terrifying incident and everyone is extremely distressed because of these problems. Pakistan's military says it hit 22 Afghan military targets.

3:25A spokesperson claimed nearly 300 Taliban officials and militants were killed while losses on the Pakistani side are reported to number a dozen. Earlier on Thursday, Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops in what the Taliban government described as retaliation for previous deadly airstrikes. Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban of supporting militants accused of attacks in Pakistan. The attacks are the most significant development in the ongoing tensions between the two countries, which had agreed to a ceasefire last October following a week of deadly clashes. Here's the former Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, Malihal Lodi.

4:07Pakistan's patience has completely run out with the Taliban regime. You will recall that since the Taliban returned to power almost five years ago, there's been a surge in attacks on Pakistani territory, Pakistani security personnel and civilians by terrorist groups that are residing in Afghanistan. The former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, says his country will respond to aggression with courage. I spoke to Yama Bariz in Kabul and began by asking him what the situation was like there. Kabul last night experienced a chaotic night, I would say, and there were sounds of explosion aircraft and also gunfires.

4:54But by the dawn, it was calm. It is still calm. But still, the spokesperson of Taliban appeared in a press conference and he said that during the day, at some point in the east of Afghanistan, were bombed again by the Pakistani aircraft. And also, there are some reports of minor clashes along the Durand line. What are the people you're talking to saying? Well, the people of Afghanistan, if you speak to them in the capital, Kabul, or in the provinces, they are concerned about what's happening. They also have some concern about what is to come. But stronger than that concern, you can see anger and fury.

5:41And they believe that the war will not take them anywhere. They cannot find any solution by force. And they think the best way out is to sit on the table and discuss the problems and find a way out. Pakistan says the Afghan Taliban are supporting the Pakistani Taliban. Is that true? Well, that's a claim which the Pakistani officials reiterate whenever there is an incident in Pakistan. But on the contrary, the Taliban on the other side, they have always been denying that. When we recently spoke to the defense minister of Taliban, and he said that the attacks which happen inside Pakistan are hundreds of kilometers inside the country.

6:35So that is the failure of the Pakistani security forces, which the Taliban government claimed that they are trying to hide by these accusations which they make. They are saying that they have made a pledge in Qatar that they will not let the soil of Afghanistan to be used against any country, and they are saying they are still standing by that pledge. The Afghan soil is not fed to any other regional country, And it is only Pakistan that they are trying to make these sort of accusations, which they say it is not true. So it's war then? Pakistani defense minister today, he openly said they are in open war with Afghanistan.

7:21But on the other side, when we see there are some efforts of de-escalation, the Pakistani foreign minister spoke to his Qatari and to his Saudi counterparts. Of course, Iranians have shown concern and offered mediation. Taliban's foreign minister spoke to his Turkish counterpart. So there are some efforts going on behind the scene in order to de-escalate. Yama Baris in Kabul. China and Iran have offered to mediate to try to end hostilities. Our correspondent in the region, Yogyatollah Moiryeh, has been telling me more about this latest escalation. This is the latest serious escalation in months of hostilities between the two sides.

8:07And there's been a blame game that's been going on. So Afghanistan's Taliban government says that the ground offensive it launched last night was in response to Pakistan's airstrikes in Afghanistan in February in a province close to the border with Pakistan. Pakistan says it was launching those airstrikes because it believes Afghanistan's Taliban government is supporting, and I'm quoting the Pakistani government here, is supporting anti-Pakistan terrorists who are launching attacks in Pakistan, including the deadly attack recently in Islamabad targeting a mosque in which dozens of people were killed.

8:47So this is a blame game that has been going on for several months. The last serious escalation was in October 2025. There were attempts to at the time by Qatar and by Turkey. And while a fragile ceasefire followed, which has been broken, there was no proper agreement between the two sides on ending hostilities. Yoghita Lemoye. And we have more on this on our YouTube channel. Search for BBC News on YouTube and you'll find Global News Podcast in the podcast section. There's a news story available every weekday. Nine senior offices of the Chinese military have been officially removed as delegates to the country's annual parliamentary session just days before it's due to start.

9:34It's being seen as a sign that Xi Jinping's crackdown within the upper ranks of the People's Liberation Army is continuing. I heard more from our China correspondent Stephen McDonnell, who's in Beijing. We just got a readout saying that the following delegates to the National People's Congress have been removed. Five full generals, four other senior officers. No explanation why. It's not unusual in this opaque system to not find out the details of these things. But obviously, if they're delegates to this Congress, this annual Congress, and they're a few days out before the Congress is about to start, removed from the Congress, well, it shows they've been purged.

10:18And so the important thing really is that it's ongoing for months now. Xi Jinping has been cutting a swathe through the upper echelons of the PLA and nine more. It seems incredible, but they just keep going down. Yeah, and people have talked about them perhaps being seen by President Xi as potential rivals, but are there potential rivals? Would anyone dare? It is an interesting question. Analysts would say it doesn't really matter how real the threat is. It's how Xi Jinping feels about the threat. So it's not so much maybe that he would realistically think a couple of generals are going to get together and lay on a coup.

10:58but the idea that power could even a little bit be slipping from his hands or that you there could be groupings within the party not really listening to him he's just so all-powerful we've not seen anything like it since Mao and he has used it seems this anti-corruption crackdown and that's the kind of official excuse for the more broad crackdown that this is all about corruption to take out his political enemies. And by that, anyone who's not completely on board with the mission and who knows what you've got to do to fall foul of this. I mean, even when the anti-corruption crackdown started, when Xi Jinping first came into power, there was a feeling that, sure, corruption has been a huge problem here.

11:43But really, all of these senior figures are in some way or another corrupt. The real question is, who's he taking out and why? and there are people who've been loyal to him who've avoided the blade swinging but even those who seemed like they were very close to Xi like Zhang Yil-shia he was the head of the military number two only to Xi Jinping he was taken down in the last round before this round of purges and so it doesn't matter how senior you are you can you can go down and in fact in some ways if become more senior, it's even more dangerous. Stephen McDonnell in Beijing. After nearly a month of a full oil blockade of Cuba, the US has said it will ease the ban if the oil is sent to the island's small private sector and not the government.

12:34Since US forces removed its close ally, Nicolas Maduro, from power in Venezuela, Cuba has lost its most important source of crude oil. And as Will Grant reports from Havana, the effects of the US blockade are having huge consequences.

12:53With Washington in control of Venezuela's oil industry and President Trump threatening tariffs against any nation which sends Cuba fuel, Breini Hernández has to chop driftwood he found on the beach. Gas hasn't been delivered in months to their huddle of flimsy homes in a Havana suburb, so the construction worker has no choice but to cook with firewood. His daughter went to school with no breakfast this morning.

13:23Every day is the same hunger, the same misery, says Brainy, stirring a pot of rice. Hopefully I can get enough money together in the next couple of days for a packet of hot dogs or three or four eggs. The situation has worsened since the US imposed a total fuel blockade on Cuba. Yet Brainy doesn't direct his ire at Washington. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd like Trump to take this place over. Then let's see if things get better, he says with disarming honesty.

13:59Brainy's remains an extreme view. Most don't want President Trump in charge. But such is the level of exhaustion at the dire circumstances, the public's fear of reprisals for speaking out is beginning to evaporate. On the streets, the effects of Washington's actions are even clearer. I'm at a crossroads in central Havana. It's always been a run-down and difficult neighbourhood for its residents. But now, every couple of corners, there is a huge festering pile of uncollected rubbish. just discarded box after box and plastic bag after plastic bag. There's no fuel with which to run. The rubbish trucks amid this energy crisis, such basic services are some of the first to go.

14:47I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. The Trump administration's oil shutout is a far cry from the optimism of Washington's Cuba policy of a decade ago. Next month marks the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba, becoming the first sitting US president to step foot on the island in almost a century. The man who oversaw the diplomatic thaw was the then US ambassador to Cuba, Jeffrey de Laurentiis. It seems like they're taking coercive steps to bring the government to the table or capitulate, but not necessarily collapse. And that's a pretty risky strategy, it seems to me, with a lot of potential for unintended consequences.

15:34The former US ambassador thinks the Trump administration is trying to repeat in Cuba the model it supplied in Venezuela. That is not overnight change, but rather working with an acceptable partner inside the existing regime. 20 years ago, the diaspora, mostly in South Florida, would have been completely opposed to that kind of approach. I'm guessing now they're going to give the president and the secretary the benefit of the doubt.

16:05In the meantime, drivers must use a government-run app called Ticket, under which they're allowed a maximum of 20 litres of fuel paid for in US dollars. Esteban Bello is a tour operator with several almendrones, the big gas-guzzling 1950s automobiles. He drives me around in his own beat-up Payunday on a fruitless search of the city's petrol stations.

16:32There's a problem here, the fuel problem, so surely the people at the top on both sides have to sit down and figure this out, Esteban says bluntly. This is affecting the entire country, all of us, from the very top to the very bottom. In a time of delicate diplomacy allegedly taking place over this beleaguered nation, it was a diplomatic answer. But the truth is, those at the very top are feeling the oil blockade much less acutely than those at the very bottom.

17:03Will Grant in Havana. The US is planning to expand its scheme for refugees from South Africa to 4 ,500 new applications per month, according to a State Department document seen by the Reuters News Agency. President Trump had previously said Washington would only admit 7 ,500 refugees from around the world this fiscal year. Our Africa correspondent Maeni Jones is in Johannesburg. According to a previously unreported document from the US State Department, dated January 27th and seen by Reuters, the US plans to process more applications for refugee status from what it describes as persecuted minorities in South Africa this year.

17:45It's also reportedly planning to install trailers on embassy property in Pretoria to support the increase. The BBC has reached out to the State Department and the US Embassy in South Africa for confirmation. A BBC reporter drove past the US Embassy in Pretoria on Friday, but saw no evidence of trailers on the site. The South African Department for International Relations and Cooperation has told the BBC it hasn't stopped people from applying to the scheme, as long as it complies with the country's laws. But it reiterates that its Afrikaner minority doesn't face systemic persecution. Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch and French settlers.

18:19According to Reuters, 2 ,000 White-Auf Africans have entered the US as refugees as of January 31st, under a programme launched in May of 2025, although more applications have been processed in recent months. Mayini Jones. Still to come in this podcast. It's just amazing. It's called Bin Enakil, which means between the palm trees. It has 60 marble fountains, seven gardens with more than 2 ,000 palm trees, intricate stucco plaster work on the walls, geometrical mosaics, gold-draped rooms. The Moroccan palace Jeffrey Epstein tried to buy the day before he was arrested.

19:08What happens when a mandate becomes a breakthrough? I'm Nishita Henry, special host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte. I sat down with two leaders who are redefining what enterprise transformation looks like. Jerry Hoberman from Deloitte and Sarah Oligood from AWS took me behind the scenes on how manufacturing, government, and global enterprises are evolving through major systems change. What excites me is when we have these breakthrough moments that this stuff doesn't happen by accident. The triad of AWS, of Deloitte, of SAP, being able to understand the value proposition that people seek, being able to architect that, and then actually to define a roadmap to progressively achieve the goal really is what makes these successful.

19:55Getting your humans to change the way they're interacting with their technology, the way that they're following the processes, or just that they're reinventing altogether and we're going to completely throw something out is very challenging. Here's what stood out. The 2027 SAP deadline isn't a compliance problem. It's a strategic reset, a chance to rethink how value is created. If your vision is across the 10-year horizon, your ROI is going to be different than if your vision is across a one or two-year horizon. So how do you move decades of systems and data without slowing the business down? And how do you simplify operations while preparing for what comes next?

20:33From legacy systems to AI-ready infrastructure, the full conversation reveals how Deloitte, AWS, and SAP help organizations reduce risk and unlock continuous innovation. All of that and more on this special episode of Resilient Edge. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

20:54I'm Sam Paranti, and for the past seven years, have been granted access to a team of US special agents. Their job? To track down those who create and trade in sickening images on the dark web. When I hug my kids, that's your fuel. That's your why. In the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, the darkest web tells their story. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.

21:38I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service, Sheila Coronel tells the story of how the Philippines' 1986 revolution is being rewritten. A million protesters faced down tanks in Manila and toppled a dictator. But 40 years on, the Marcos family are back in power. How did this happen? Rewriting a revolution. Listen now by searching for BBC The Documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

22:47attacks and mass hostage-taking, which killed some 1 ,200 people in Israel in October 2023. Amid widespread destruction and displacement in the territory, our Middle East correspondent Yoland Nell reports from Jerusalem on how Gazans are trying to worship, reflect and celebrate.

23:12A song and drums wake up residents of Khan Yunus for their pre-dawn Ramadan breakfast or suhoor. The Musaharati picks his path around flattened buildings. Amid their ongoing hardships, this year Palestinians in Gaza are getting a taste of traditional Ramadan festivities. festivities. There are decorations hung among the rubble at communal gatherings to break the daily dawn to dusk fast. But most people in Gaza remain displaced, living in tents after two years of devastating war. This Ramadan, Alia Al Ansari in Gaza City is thinking of her son who was killed and all she's lost. Our lives changed.

23:56Our food, our clothes, everything in our lives changed. The difference is vast, like heaven and hell. Before the war, God be praised, we were very well off. Now, God be praised that we are alive.

24:15Gaza's markets are now bustling. Late last year, global hunger experts said there was no longer a famine in the Strip, with more aid allowed to enter by Israel, as well as private imports. Still, with little income and nearly the entire population living in poverty, one shopper, Alaa Hijazi, says many are feeling the strain this holiday. Today, prices are very high and unaffordable for many. Many people see the goods but can't buy them. We hope that God will ease it on people and life returns to how it was before 7th October 2023. God willing, things will improve for the better.

25:02Praying in the ruins, the iconic Great Omri Mosque was Gaza's biggest and oldest. Most mosques in the Strip were destroyed or damaged in the war. Israel says Palestinian armed groups operated in civilian sites, including places of worship, which Hamas denies. Palestinians now resort to praying in special tents or what's left of their mosques. Abu Bilal al-Hirji was pleased to see crowds back at Salakadiyan Mosque in Gaza City. Praise be to God. Of course, all the people came and prayed despite the destruction and the devastation. There is no alternative. We must pray.

25:45At this time of spiritual reflection, there's fear about what happens next. The ceasefire still looks fragile, with regular deadly Israeli airstrikes and claims of violations by both sides. A US peace plan is slow to take effect. Struggling to find the usual joy in Ramadan, many Gazans are seeking comfort in its religious rituals.