Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former U.S. military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.

Pakistan has been the Afghan Taliban’s closest friend for decades. It was Islamabad that helped give birth to the Taliban in the early 1990s – as a way to give Pakistan "strategic depth" in its rivalry with India.

Pakistan has lodged a formal protest with Afghanistan after a suicide attack near the border killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and a girl.

According to Pakistani authorities, air raids in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Paktika provinces targeted sanctuaries of Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, and its affiliates, killing at least “80 militants in intelligence-based air strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border targeting seven camps”.