Afghanistan Accuses Pakistan of Deadly Kabul Airstrike; 400 Reported Killed

Afghanistan accused Pakistan of carrying out an airstrike on a drug rehabilitation facility in the country's capital late on Monday, killing at least 400 people. It marked a dramatic escalation of a conflict that began late last month and has seen repeated cross-border clashes as well as airstrikes inside Afghanistan. There has been no response to international appeals for a ceasefire.

Pakistan denied that it had attacked a hospital, claiming that no civilian locations were impacted by its strikes, which were also carried out in eastern Afghanistan.

In a post on X, Hamdullah Fitrat, the deputy government spokesperson for Afghanistan, stated that the airstrike had struck the hospital in Kabul at around 9 p.m. local time, demolishing significant portions of the 2,000-bed institution. He said the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported injured.

According to AP, 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. Fitrat said rescue teams were working to control the fire and recover the bodies.

As the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in years entered a third week, the strike occurred hours after Afghan officials reported that the two sides traded gunfire along their shared border, killing four people in Afghanistan.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan government, denounced the attack on X and charged Pakistan with "targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors." In a post before the death toll rose into the hundreds, he said those killed and injured were patients at the hospital.

He wrote, “We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity.”

However, Pakistan’s 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 “technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities” at two locations in Kabul were destroyed.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information, additionally claimed 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.”