Pakistan rejects Afghan charges of killing hundreds at rehab centre

Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Afghanistan’s claims that a Pakistani airstrike on a Kabul hospital killed at least 400 as false and misleading and said it “precisely targeted military ​installations and terrorist support infrastructure” on Monday night.

“The Afghan Taliban regime is peddling yet another falsehood by alleging that Pakistan targeted a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul. This claim is entirely baseless,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Ataullah Tarar said.

“Pakistan’s Armed Forces successfully carried out precision airstrikes on the night of 16 March as a part of Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, targeting Afghan Taliban regime terrorism sponsoring military installations in Kabul and Nangarhar,” Tarar said on Tuesday.

In a tweet, he said that technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities at two locations in Kabul were effectively destroyed. The visible secondary detonations after the strikes clearly indicate the presence of large ammunition depots.

In Nangarhar, Pakistan Armed Forces also struck four Afghan Taliban regime terrorism sponsoring military sites, destroying associated logistics, ammunition, and technical infrastructure, Tarar said.

He added that all targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by the Afghan Taliban regime to support its multiple terror proxies.

However, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat posted on X that the airstrike hit the Omid 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 408 people had been killed and 265 injured.

Local television footage on Tuesday showed security forces using flashlights as they carried casualties from the site while firefighters struggled to extinguish the flames.

The United Nation’s mission in Afghanistan called for an immediate ceasefire.

Thameen Al Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an investigation into the strike and said those responsible must be “held to account in line with international standards.”

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 Afghanistan.

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.”

Tariq Butt / Agencies