Afghanistan says Pakistan airstrike in hospital killed at least 400

KABUL: Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of targeting a hospital for drug users in the Afghan capital late Monday, saying the airstrike had killed 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. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.

Pakistan dismissed the accusation that it had hit a hospital, saying its strikes, which were also conducted in eastern Afghanistan, did not hit any civilian sites.

Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman, Hamdullah Fitrat, in a post on X, said the airstrike had hit the hospital at about 9 p.m. local time, destroying large sections of the 2,000-bed facility. He said the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported injured.

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.

The alleged attack came hours after Afghan officials said the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, killing four people in Afghanistan, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in years entered a third week.

Afghanistan’s government spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, condemned the strike on X, accusing Pakistan of “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.

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

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul.

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.