Afghanistan has accused Pakistan’s military of launching an airstrike on a hospital treating drug users in the capital, Kabul, killing at least 400 people.
Pakistan dismissed the claim as “false and aimed at misleading public opinion”, saying it only targeted military installations in Kabul and the province of Nangahar on Monday.
The attack on Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital took place at about 9pm local time (16:30 GMT), according to Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban government.
The hospital is a 2,000-bed facility, and the raid destroyed large sections of the building, he wrote on X.
“Unfortunately, the death toll has so far reached 400, while around 250 others have been reported injured. Rescue teams are currently at the scene, working to control the fire and recover the remaining bodies of the victims,” he added.
Local television stations posted footage showing firefighters struggling to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building.
Omid Stanikzai, 31, a security guard at the hospital, told the AFP news agency that he had heard jets patrolling in the sky before the attack.
“There were military units all around us. When these military units fired on the jet, the jet dropped bombs and a fire broke out,” he said.
All of the dead and injured were civilians, he added.
‘Crime against humanity’
The attack came hours after Afghan officials said the two sides had exchanged fire along their common border, with four people killed in Afghanistan, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in years entered a third week.
Zabihullah Mujahid, another spokesman for the Afghan government, condemned the hospital strike on X earlier, saying Pakistan has once again “violated Afghanistan’s airspace and targeted a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul”. He said the Afghan government considers “such an act to be against all accepted principles, and a crime against humanity”.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying that no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
In a post on X, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information said the strikes had “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure, including technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of Afghan Taliban” and Afghanistan-based Pakistani fighters in Kabul and Nangarhar. It added that the facilities were being used against innocent Pakistani civilians.
Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted”, the ministry said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying that no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
In a post on X, Pakistan’s Ministry of Information said the strikes had “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure, including technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of Afghan Taliban” and Afghanistan-based Pakistani fighters in Kabul and Nangarhar. It added that the facilities were being used against innocent Pakistani civilians.
Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted”, the ministry said.
Pakistan often accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing safe haven to the Pakistan Taliban, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, as well as to outlawed Baloch separatist groups and other groups who frequently target Pakistani security forces and civilians across the country. Kabul denies these claims.
‘No off-ramps in sight’
Earlier, Afghan officials said four people, including two children, were killed, and 10 other people were wounded in southeastern Afghanistan in Monday’s exchange of fire. Mortar shells fired from Pakistan overnight struck villages in the Khost province and destroyed several homes, said Mustaghfar Gurbaz, a spokesperson for the provincial governor.
Fighting between the two nations erupted last month when Pakistan launched air strikes in Afghanistan that Islamabad said were targeting armed groups. Afghanistan called the strikes a violation of its sovereignty and launched its own attacks.
The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected rebels.
China said on Monday that its special envoy has spent a week mediating between the two sides and had urged an immediate ceasefire.
But South Asia expert Michael Kugelman, from the Atlantic Council international affairs think tank, told the AFP that the fighting showed little sign of ending soon.
“The Arab Gulf nations that mediated previous rounds of Afghanistan-Pakistan talks are now bogged down by their own war. Other mediators, including China, have had limited success,” he said, referring to the US and Israel’s war on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent attacks on Gulf countries that host US bases.
“Pakistan appears intent to keep hitting targets in Afghanistan, and the Taliban is determined to retaliate with operations on Pakistani border posts, and, potentially, with asymmetric tactics – from launching drones to sponsoring militant attacks in wider Pakistan,” he said.
“There are no off-ramps in sight.”
Pakistani Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar said on Sunday that the military has killed 684 Afghan Taliban forces, a claim rejected by the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which says the casualties are far lower.
Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry and other officials have said that Afghanistan has killed more than 100 Pakistani soldiers.
On Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it had begun mobilising to provide “immediate lifesaving food” to more than 20,000 families that have been displaced in Afghanistan due to the conflict.
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