Kabul

Afghan officials say a suspected Pakistani air strike hit a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, killing hundreds of patients and staff and leaving the facility in ruins. Pakistan denies targeting civilians, as tensions escalate between Islamabad and Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government.

Afghan authorities say a Pakistani attack killed hundreds of civilians; Islamabad rejects claim as ‘false’.

Families have gathered outside a drug treatment centre in the Afghan capital, Kabul, looking for their loved ones after it was hit in a Pakistani air strike, which Taliban authorities said killed 408 people.

The attack on Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital took place at about 9pm local time (16:30 GMT) on Monday.

Baryalai Amiri, a 38-year-old mechanic, was at the 2,000-bed facility on Tuesday to look for his brother, who was admitted about 25 days ago.

“We are not given the proper information,” Amiri told the AFP news agency, as rescuers picked through the rubble nearby. “So far, we don’t know where he is.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in conflict for months, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring armed groups that have mounted deadly cross-border attacks.

The latest round of violence that began last month⁠, two days before the world’s focus shifted sharply to the US-Israel war on Iran, is the worst ever between the neighbours.

The two nations share a 2,600km (1,600-mile) border. The conflict had ebbed amid attempts by friendly countries, including China, to mediate and end the fighting before flaring up again.

Pakistan denied Afghan claims that its latest attack targeted civilians, instead insisting that it carried out precision strikes on “military installations and terrorist support infrastructure”.

“Pakistan’s targeting is precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted,” the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said. Islamabad dismissed the claim as “false and aimed at misleading public opinion”.

The health authorities said there were about 3,000 patients from across Afghanistan at the clinic at the time of the attack, which triggered panic in Kabul just after residents had broken their daily Ramadan fast.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was “dismayed” by reports of the air raids and civilian casualties.

“I urge parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint & respect international law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects such as hospitals,” he posted on X.

‘It was like doomsday’

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs said on Tuesday that the attack killed 408 people and injured 265.

Witnesses said they heard three explosions just as people in the hospital were completing evening prayers. Two of the bombs struck rooms and patient areas, they said.

“The whole place caught fire. It was like doomsday,” 50-year-old Ahmad told the Reuters news agency.

“My friends were burning in the fire, and we could not save them all,” he said, giving only his first name as he was under treatment at the facility.

Ambulance driver Haji Fahim told Reuters that he arrived at the site shortly after the air raids.

“When I arrived [last night], I saw that everything was burning, people were burning,” Fahim said on Tuesday. “Early in the morning, they called me again and told ⁠me to come back because there are still bodies under the rubble.”

The clinic was established in 2016 and has treated hundreds of people, also providing them with vocational training, such as tailoring and carpentry, to make them employable, according to local media reports.

Women and children were among those killed in the attacks, according to the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government has accused Pakistan of targeting civilian homes in overnight air attacks in the capital Kabul and the southern province of Kandahar, as fighting between the two neighbours entered its third week, overshadowed by the United States-Israel war on Iran igniting the middle East.

Women and children were among those killed in the attacks, according to the Taliban.

Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X Friday that Pakistan’s aircraft also struck fuel depots belonging to the private airline Kam Air near Kandahar airport.

There was no immediate comment from Pakistan’s military or government.

Calls for restraint from the international community have gone unheeded by both sides.

On Thursday, the Taliban government said four members of the same family, including two children, were killed by Pakistani artillery and mortar fire in eastern Afghanistan.

The deaths reported on Thursday brought the toll to seven people killed in Afghanistan since Tuesday in cross-border clashes, according to authorities in Kabul. That could rise with the latest attacks on Friday.

Fighting between the two countries intensified on February 26 when Afghanistan launched an offensive along their shared border in retaliation for earlier Pakistani air attacks on the Pakistan Taliban, just two days before the US and Israel attacked Iran, starting a sprawling regional war.

Pakistan maintains that it does not target civilians, and casualty claims from both sides are difficult to verify independently.

Islamabad accuses Kabul of harbouring fighters from the Pakistan Taliban, which has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks inside Pakistan, and from the ISIS (ISIL) affiliate in Khorasan province. Afghan authorities deny the charge.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has said 56 civilians have been killed there, including 24 children, by Pakistani military operations from February 26 to March 5.

Pakistani officials have confirmed about 12 soldiers were killed and 27 wounded in the latest bout of fighting, while the Taliban claims to have killed more than 150.

About 115,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, according to the UN.