We’ve been examining satellite images taken yesterday of the Feodosia oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea, which shows some damage after a recent drone strike. A huge plume of smoke is still clearly visible, indicating it was burning at the time the image was taken.

In the wake of the latest clashes, the Taliban claimed that they “killed a large number of Pakistani soldiers”, captured their posts, seized their weapons, and “destroyed” most of their facilities in retaliation for an attack in the early hours of Wednesday.

The ceasefire, brokered late on Wednesday with mediation from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, reportedly came after Pakistan pleaded with the two nations to intervene.

The Taliban government has confirmed that it attacked Pakistani troops in multiple mountainous locations on the northern border. Casualties are not yet clear in what the Taliban called "retaliatory operations", after it said Pakistan violated Afghan airspace and bombed a market inside its border on Thursday.

Several Pakistani soldiers were killed after Afghanistan security forces retaliated to unprovoked aggression along Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Taliban spokesperson reportedly said

The TTP’s call for a Sharia-based caliphate has not only undermined Pakistan’s internal stability but also exposed its hollow claims of being a victim of terrorism when it has long been an architect of the very forces now consuming it.

Amid growing clashes with the Taliban, Pakistan’s moves mirror, ironically, an approach it has decried in the past.