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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Rescuers recovered more bodies from the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul on Tuesday after an overnight airstrike killed more than 400 people, according to officials, in a dramatic escalation of a conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan that is now in its third week.
Pakistan rejected Afghanistan’s accusation that it targeted the hospital, insisting 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 as propaganda.
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The casualties were taken to several hospitals in the area, where crowds gathered to search for their loved ones among the injured and the dead. It wasn’t possible to independently confirm the death toll.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.
The overnight strike came hours after Afghan officials said that the two sides exchanged fire along the border, killing four people in Afghanistan.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of providing safe haven for militants who frequently carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially for 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.
‘Precisely targeted’
In a late-night post on X, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9 p.m. local time and that large sections of the facility had been destroyed.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said at least 408 people had been killed and 265 injured.
Night-time footage from local television stations showed 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 as part of government plans to stamp out drug addiction in the country.
The site, near Kabul’s international airport, is located beside 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.
A reporter for The Associated Press in an area near the site at the time of the strike said he heard a military jet fly overhead followed by a very powerful explosion.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in an X post that the Pakistani military had “precisely targeted” Camp Phoenix, which it said was now a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.” However, it said that the hospital was “multiple kilometers” away from the former camp and accused Afghan officials of lying. Google Maps also shows another location, east of Kabul city, also labeled as Camp Phoenix.
“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.
Rescuers use a crane to move debris
Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike, 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.
Rescue team worker 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 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.”
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.”
‘Yet another falsehood’
In Islamabad, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar rejected Afghanistan’s accusations that Pakistan had targeted a hospital as “entirely baseless.”
Tarar said the “Afghan Taliban regime is peddling yet another falsehood,” and that Pakistan had only engaged military and militant targets. He said Pakistan had targeted facilities “being directly or indirectly used to plan, facilitate, shelter, train or abet terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.”
Tarar said overnight strikes in Kabul and in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar were “precise, deliberate and professional,” and denied any civilian infrastructure was hit.
“No hospital, no drug rehabilitation center, and no civilian facility was targeted,” he said.
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.
