Rescue crews were still digging bodies out of the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital in the Afghan capital after officials there said an overnight Pakistani airstrike killed at least 400 people at the facility.
Pakistan has denied Afghanistan’s accusation that it targeted a hospital, saying its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, did not hit any civilian sites.
The strikes late Monday night mark a dramatic escalation of a conflict that began between Afghanistan and Pakistan late last month and has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan.
International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.
In a late-night post on X, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike had hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9pm local time.
He said large sections of the facility had been destroyed and that the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported injured. There was no updated official death toll yesterday.
Local television stations posted footage on X showing security forces using flashlights as they carried out casualties while firemen struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building.
The strike came hours after Afghan officials said the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, killing four people in Afghanistan, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in years entered a third week.
Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike on X, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors”.
He said those killed were “innocent civilians and addicts”.
“We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he said in a separate post on X.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X early yesterday, saying that the Pakistani military had “carried out precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and the eastern province of Nangarhar.
He said “technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities” at two locations in Kabul were destroyed.
“All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime to support its multiple terror proxies,” he wrote.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information said earlier that Mujahid’s claim was “false and misleading” and aimed at stirring sentiment and cover what it described as ”illegitimate support for cross-border terrorism”.
It said Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted.” — AP
