Mustaghfir Gubuz, spokesperson for the governor in Khost province, told the AFP news agency on Monday that at midnight (19:30 GMT on Sunday), Pakistani forces “fired mortar shells on the Nari village of Gurbuz district, killing a woman and a child”. The governor’s office also said in a statement that mortar shelling killed two children in the Afghan Dubai area of Khost. Separately, government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said on X that one person was killed in the eastern province of Nuristan on Sunday when shelling hit a “civilian home”. According to Afghan authorities, in the past week, cross-border fighting has killed at least 18 civilians. On Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had begun mobilising to provide “immediate lifesaving food” to more than 20,000 families that had been displaced in Afghanistan due to the conflict. China announced on Monday that its special envoy Yue Xiaoyong had spent a week through Saturday mediating between the two countries and urging an immediate ceasefire.