KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Rescue crews were still digging bodies out of the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital in the Afghan capital on Tuesday morning, after officials there said that an overnight Pakistani airstrike killed at least 400 people in a dramatic escalation of a conflict between the two neighbors that is now in its third week.
Pakistan has denied Afghanistan’s accusation that it targeted a hospital, insisting that its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, were aimed at military facilities. It dismissed Afghanistan’s claims of hundreds of casualties from a strike on a hospital as being propaganda.
The casualties were taken to several hospitals in the area. It wasn’t immediately possible to independently confirm the death toll.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan began in late February, and has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded. The strike came hours after Afghan officials said that the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, killing four people in Afghanistan.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of providing safe haven for militants who frequently carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially to the Pakistani Taliban, a group separate but closely allied with the Afghan Taliban who took over Afghanistan in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States. Kabul denies the charge.
Drug rehab hospital
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 9 p.m. local time.
He said that 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 wounded. There was no updated official death toll early Tuesday morning.
Local television stations posted footage on X showing security forces using flashlights as they carried out casualties while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins of a building.
The Omid hospital was renamed and expanded in size roughly a year ago from the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital. The site is located near a former NATO military base, Camp Phoenix, where U.S. forces used to train the Afghan National Army. After the Taliban seized control of the country in 2021, the base was taken over by Afghanistan’s new authorities. It wasn’t immediately clear what was now housed on the site of the former base.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in an X post that the Pakistani military had “precisely targeted” the Camp Phoenix site, which it said was now a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.” It said in its post that Omid hospital was “multiple kilometers” away from the former camp and accused Afghan officials of lying.
“Another important question also lingers, as to why would an alleged drug rehabilitation facility be colocated with lethal ammunition storage site in a military camp? This also remains unanswered,” the Information Ministry wrote.
Afghan government condemns attack
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.
A member of the rescue team working at the site on Tuesday morning, Allah Mohammad Farooq, said that hundreds had been killed.
“When we arrived here, everyone was buried under the rubble,” he said. “We then used a crane to pull them out. Most of the people were dead, and many are still trapped under the debris. “
A man sitting outside the site broke down in tears as he recounted hearing about the bombing. Haji Najibullah said that his son and other relatives were being treated in the hospital.
“We have no information about who is alive and who is buried under the rubble,” he said. “Only God knows who may have survived and who may be injured. So far, we have no news at all.”
The U.N. human rights expert in Afghanistan, Richard Bennet, said in an X post that he was “dismayed by fresh reports of #Pakistan airstrikes in #Afghanistan and resulting civilian casualties.” Offering his condolences, he added: “I urge parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint & respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals.”
Pakistan dismisses the allegations
Shortly after Afghanistan accused Pakistan of targeting the hospital Monday night, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X in the early hours of Tuesday that the Pakistani military had “carried out precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and the eastern province of Nangarhar. He said that “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.
The latest conflict
The fighting — the most severe between the two neighbors — began in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan that Kabul said killed civilians. The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October, after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.
Pakistan has declared that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
On Saturday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said that Afghanistan’s Taliban administration crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that wounded several civilians in Pakistan last week.
Munir Ahmed reported from Islamabad, and Elena Becatoros from Athens, Greece.